Last Second Savior
by plums
Summary: While leading the final charge against a retreating Dark Lord, Harry is thrown through a destabilized Demon Portal, landing on a strange world in a galaxy far far away. Eventual Harry / Multi
1. The Big One

**Summary:**

Harry Potter / Star Wars-over. While leading the final charge against a retreating Dark Lord, Harry is thrown through a destabilized Demon Portal, landing on a strange world in a galaxy far far away.

**Disclaimer**

I don't own Harry Potter in _any _way. JKR has those rights... Also, Star Wars is owned by Lucasfilm/George Lucas, etc etc.

***Author's Note ***

Inspirations: Sword and Magic by bluminous8 (both versions)

Not sure if the original inspiration(s) of this will ever be continued. I really loved the concept and thought I would take my own crack at things. I mean seriously, Aayla Secura, a blue woman with tentacles on her head. How can you resist?

I started this story literally 15 months ago. I made good progress for a while, then job stuff got in the way, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I get lots of questions about it, so I figure I'll at least start posting a chapter or two every few months of it.

Chapter First Published: 2013-03-03

Chapter Last Update:

**Chapter 1 – The Big One**

"This is it," he heard George Weasley quietly speak a few feet over to Harry's right.

There was a slight pause before a sultry feminine voice continued, "The Big One."

He heard the smile in the voice of George's wife Angelina Weasley as she repeated their oft-remembered secret mantra.

Harry simply smiled and shook his head in spite of himself. He could feel both of their eyes upon him as they enjoyed his subtle reaction to their words, which was their motivation the whole time. There had been precious few reasons to smile for a long time, and one could always count on George and Angelina to get Harry out of whatever funk he was in at any given moment. A sigh escaped Harry's mouth as he gave in.

"The one we've all been waiting for," Harry said while continued to shake his head. There was triumph clearly heard in the laughter from George and Angelina. Meanwhile Harry could clearly see confused looks upon the dozens of other faces in range who heard the conversation.

The confusion would never be explained to those who heard, because the attention of Harry, George, and Angelina immediately returned to the scene of nightmares in front of them.

This _was_ it. Before them lay hopefully the last battle of the war which had plagued Earth for the last decade. He was twenty-nine years old and was a veteran of one wizard war, and one all-encompassing World War.

Two years after the fall of Voldemort, the next Dark Lord arose in Eastern Europe. Within months, the new Dark Lord had shattered the Statute of Secrecy through his brazen creation of dozens of Demonic Summoning Portals across the planet. The demons were uncontrollable unless the Dark Wizard that summoned them actually stayed nearby. Otherwise they roamed the land and did whatever they wanted. It was debatable which was worse: an enthralled or a rogue demon. The carnage either created was always terrible.

The world's militaries mobilized almost overnight, and the threat and fear of the previously hidden wizard society was quickly overshadowed by the general populace's need to have any means available to save their world.

Hogwarts had been leveled to the ground during the first wave of the summonings. A portal opened on the high-street of Hogsmeade, which spilled out hundreds of fire-breathing elephant sized demons, which promptly made short work of the historic school and the entire surrounding countryside.

Harry had leapt into the fray and offered his services. He was renowned for being among the first people in the world to bring down a demon, was also infamous for being among the first to nearly die from the after effects. The corpses of demons gave off a staggering amount of heat. The bodies of the most powerful baked the surrounding area for weeks afterwards. The temperature was so high that unprotected cloth left exposed at a distance of fifty feet could easily spontaneously combust into flame in some cases. Whole cities were leveled in the conflagrations caused by muggle weapons taking out larger demons rampaging in cities, only to leave the cities in flames after their death throes subsided.

Hermione Granger led a team of Unspeakables in runic array development that would absorb the heat and turn that energy into a shield to protect the surrounding area. The hotter the flame, the stronger the shield got with no theoretical limit in sight to how strong the shield could get. Numerous teams trained and deployed across the world whose sole purpose was to arrive at the scene of battles and set up containment and isolation areas around the corpses of still hot demons.

These runic arrays were taught to every soldier in the world, both magical and non-magical, and all were required to perform maintenance on shields even if the magical soldiers were the only ones who could empower them. The main benefit for Harry was that, in learning to maintain his own equipment, he continued to learn as much as he could about runes and wards. It was a fascinating subject to him that he wished he had pursues sooner, and one that he felt would aid him the rest of his life.

Harry eventually went on to claim more kills over demons than any other person on the planet. Now that he had become comfortable with his magic, his power was staggering. He easily became one of the most efficient demon killing machines the world had ever known. When he was not on missions, he constantly tried to expand his horizons and abilities. This pushed him to learn more about runes, wards, and curse breaking since the magic produced by these three areas had become so vital to the continued existence and protection of the world.

However, none of these areas were his true love. After years of injuries, he developed a borderline hatred and phobia of his stays in infirmaries. To avoid this, he slowly became a self-taught battlefield medic. It did not keep him out of the infirmary entirely, but it allowed him to heal many of his wounds just as well as the incredibly distracted Medi-Wizards could, and allowed him to recognize when he truly needed expert help.

Seeing positive results on himself, he gained the courage to utilize simple spells upon wounded allies he knew would not reach help in time. After numerous battles occurred where more and more casualties lived due to the quick actions of Harry, the Auror High-Command ordered Harry to spend his free time becoming a competent Medi-Wizard. Their reasons weren't entirely magnanimous. They realized Harry was frustrated with his role in the war, and learning medicine was a constructive distraction for him to pursue between battles.

Afterwards, the attrition reduction in Harry's battalion over time could be placed squarely at his feet and all elements of the command staff quickly took notice. He began to spend more and more of his time in hospitals, where his knowledge quickly approached expert levels in healing. The benefits of his assistance during post-battle healing assignments was never more apparent when the magical stamina he possessed allowed him to continue on with his healing duties long after other Medi-Witches and Wizards succumbed to exhaustion.

However…

…that did not explain why Harry and two of his three last living friends from Hogwarts stood on the edge of a mile-wide crater that looked down upon the largest demonic portal he had ever seen. Harry's battalion was known far and wide as the most successful demon hunting division in the world, but this portal was something even they had never seen before.

Recently, the forces that protected Earth had managed their most amazing feat yet. In the previous weeks, they had launched near simultaneous strikes upon over ninety percent of the Dark Lord's minions around the world. Their efforts dismantled nearly the entire infrastructure that supported his war machine in one fell swoop, which left the Dark Lord in full retreat.

…and their pursuit of that retreat led to the creation of the largest standing army the world had ever seen

The crater before them seemed to overflow with demons; more demons than Harry or anyone else had ever seen at one time. Harry's division sat at the south end of the crater and they all looked due north at the most direct approach to the portal. The armed forces of Earth surrounded the mile-wide crater on all sides and were comprised of dozens of divisions of wizards and muggles. Over five hundred thousand troops had been deployed to the area, placing anti-apparition and portkey wards up, and making it impossible for the Dark Lord to escape.

And yet escape was still his plan. Harry could see the Dark Wanker from where he currently stood alone in a clearing directly in front of the portal. He was in the process of creating something Harry had heard of before, but had never actually seen. In the past ten years, Harry and everyone around him had seen hundreds of demon-summoning portals. Their size always varied, as did the human sacrifices required to bring forth certain demons, but they all typically looked the same.

The ever present red swirling pool of energy was there, backed by the palpable aura of fear and panic that always emanated and would seem to somehow dirty one's soul if you allowed your eyes to stare at them too long. The evil and sense of hopelessness that emanated from the demon's home world could actually travel through the portals to Earth. The portals could only be brought down through the death of the portal's primary caster or the destruction of the human remains that provided power to keep the portal open.

Yes, Harry had seen his fair share of demon portals before. But he had never actually seen the kind of portal in front of him now.

An outbound portal.

The Dark Idiot was actually trying to escape Earth to a demon universe through a portal. Technically, Harry had no problem with this since it was highly likely the Dark Lord would step through and instantly be eviscerated by some insanely powerful demon that would not even dream of listening to a fleshbag wizard. But it would be just his luck for the idiot to somehow enthrall the demons on the other side and then bring them all back to Earth to start the war all over again.

So this needed to end today, regardless of the consequences.

Harry looked around. Everything seemed to be set. He just waited for the arrival and conclusion of non-magical airstrikes to launch his first spell. Harry was the only officially recognized Battle Mage on the planet, and the first documented one in centuries. A Battle Mage's specialty was large-scale siege warfare. Often a battalion of troops would have one mega-caster and it was the job of every other troop present to protect that caster. Harry's contribution to the fight was so important to the coming battle's strategy, there were a half-dozen battalions assigned solely to protect Harry's battalion as they took out their specified targets below.

They never knew the real names or types of the demons he saw in front of them. They just knew the relative sizes and came up with nicknames for them. 'Destroyers' for the monstrous half dinosaur demons that could take out skyscrapers with a single swing of a fist. An entire battalion plus Harry could take down a Destroyer, but it often took more time than they had to give. Muggle weaponry was the preferred choice here if the option was available.

The other demon's nicknames tended to not matter much to Harry overall. There were dozens, and though he technically knew their capabilities, strengths and weaknesses by sight, he found he no longer cared. He simply overpowered them with broad-scoped siege spells and moved on. His focus was often the battle as a whole. His attention usually focused upon his attempts to ascertain where he could launch a siege strike to take out the maximum number of enemies and limit the amount of friendly fire incurred.

That was another reason Harry's battalion was so loved and feared at the same time. If someone went to battle at Harry's side, they usually found it to be the safest place to be on the battlefield. Friendly fire had claimed numerous friends and allies, but Harry was always just as focused upon the survival of his allies as he was the death of his enemies.

Every battle Harry participated in had priority targets, and usually his entire focus was upon the location of the Masterminds. They were the leaders of the enemy's forces, and the ones most often directly controlled and influenced by the Dark Lord. Their species within the demon ranks were always different, which is why they were always so hard to target and kill. No two were ever the same within the same battlefield. But the identification of the enemy's leaders had slowly become Harry's specialty. He just instinctually knew where the other demons turned to for guidance and orders.

And this is where he always struck first.

Even now, as he silently waited for the airstrikes to begin on the wards and five destroyers in the crater, he could identify the Masterminds. He could see at least a dozen below easily. Mentally he planned his strike order to create as much additional damage as possible. The removal of the Masterminds from the chain of command always left the rest of the demons confused and saved countless lives. His orders today were to identify and take out as many Masterminds as soon as possible, then proceed to the portal and subdue to the Dark Lord.

If only it would be that easy.

He looked at the men and women that surrounded him. Harry handpicked each over the past half-decade as the best of the best. Not from reports or other sources which could be biased, but from Harry's own eyes. He always watched the other surrounding companies during battles in his pensieve. Who looked out for their fellow comrades? Who fired first at an unexpected enemy? Finally, and most important to Harry, who were the ones that did all these things without turning into loudmouth braggarts when the battalions went on leave and hit the bars?

His people knew they were good, but they didn't care. All they cared about was living to the next mission, and that their squad mates lived to see that day too. There was loyalty and camaraderie here that you just couldn't find anywhere else.

But, It would all end today, for better or for worse. He would hopefully never have to walk into battle with any of these people ever again, but in a sense he now finally had a family. He could see himself surrounded by any of these people on Saturday afternoons with beers in their hands at any point for the rest of his life.

A very familiar sound roared over their heads. The muggle fighters unleashed the first wave of ward-buster payloads, causing the wards themselves to become visible under the strain. The protective dome of wards had to be shattered before any of them could move forward. Stealth did not exist in a fight like this. The only option available to them was to use muggle bombs to knock on the front door and then tear it down with a battering ram. It would take about a minute for the massive collection of bombs to breach the initial wards so the troops could move in.

The demons settled into defensive positions quickly at the sound of the first explosion.

The plan was to charge the crater after the boundary wards fell and annihilate the Masterminds as quickly as possible. The air support teams would quickly work to take out the Destroyers, while simultaneously not losing too many people in the process. Destroyers often decimated armies not properly positioned as they died. The normal battalions would deal with the cannon fodder demons that normally littered the battlefield, while they tried to clear the way for Harry and his support forces to charge the portal itself.

It was risky and daring plan. There was the strong risk his battalion would be cut off from their own forces since they were ordered to advance so quickly. But if it wanted end this war permanently, and finally bring Dark Lord Achenar to justice, it would be worth the price.

The wards fell with a mighty tearing sound that would have burst his ear drums had he not have protective enchantments in his helmet to deaden the noise. His battalion and supporting troops moved forward without hesitation as their spells flew out as they moved into the rift.

Harry however, had not yet taken a single step forward. For the last ten minutes, even as George and Angelina's joked with him, he had slowly gathered magic from the Earth itself to him. In the past, on rare occasions, he had reached deep within the planet itself to fuel his larger spells so he would not exhaust himself, yet he had never gathered this much magic in the past to fuel just one spell. He felt giddy and was astonished at the power he had pulled, and absent-mindedly wondered why he had never attempted spells on this scale before.

The ancient spell he collected the magic for was on his lips within moments of the sound of the first cascade collapse of the wards. Fifteen seconds later, the spell launched and seemed to disappear into nothingness in the air in front of him. Everyone within half a mile felt the power rush as it left his wand, yet lesser experienced wizards would have thought he had flubbed the spell for the lack of direct effect. But Harry knew exactly where the spell had gone. It simply had left this plane of existence and called forth an elemental of a higher dimension of Earth.

Suddenly, a fifty-story water elemental burst out burst from the ground amidst the demons halfway between the portal and the wall of humans. Harry had often summoned water elementals into fights, but he had saved this particular one for an occasion where the shock value of its entrance would both inspire his troops and demoralize his enemies.

And without a shadow of a doubt, he succeeded.

For one shining, beautiful moment, everything on the battlefield stood still and gaped at a full-fledged Lord of the Elemental Planes who Harry dragged out of its natural home. As the creature gave an inhuman growl of rage that sounded like the crashing of a wave, it produced a sword and proceeded to decimate the first things it saw: the demonic troops that surrounded it.

Harry hadn't paid attention to any of this. The Masterminds were now his target. He knew the Elemental Lord would wreck havoc upon the battlefield, yet would eventually succumb to the demonic onslaught thrown against it. It would tie up the enemy's forces and deny them the opportunity to kill wizards and humans. In addition, it would place a large amount of super cooled magical water within the battlefield, which would reduce the accumulated heat as the demons met their end. Besides, if he wanted to gape at the spectacle, he could always view the fight again in his pensieve later.

'_After all, real men don't need to stare at the explosions they create_,' thought Harry with a bit of dry humor.

The Masterminds surrounded themselves with as many grunts as possible to delay their unavoidable end. Harry called forth his arsenal of siege spells and launched the magical equivalent of aerial bombs with as much of the land's magic he still had left within him. He wanted to use up all the freely given magic of the Earth he could before he delved into his own admittedly large magical reserves.

One; two; three; four; five Masterminds fell within twice as many seconds, which left seven more to kill on the battlefield before he could join his battalion. Harry performed a quick check of the local area for problems. He saw a few fallen comrades already, so he summoned and pulled the twenty or so injured and maimed bodies towards him, which landed upon a cushioned and warded patch of land behind him that Harry established before the battle began. Two flicks of the wrist later after they had landed had all twenty victims of the demons under stasis charms that would last forty-eight hours.

He changed his focus back to the battlefield and realized the situation had definitely shifted towards their forces, but the remaining Masterminds had long since gone to ground as he expected they would after his initial salvos. They predictably surrounded themselves with so many allies that it would be almost impossible to target them directly anymore. He was happy with what he accomplished though. Almost half the Masterminds gone in ten seconds due to his efforts alone was certainly nothing to be ashamed of.

He charged into the crater and leapt off the edge of the near 200 meter drop that was before him. He spotted one more Mastermind on the way down, and another quickly cast siege spell brought his total up to six down. He judged it a good use of the last of the gathered magical energies he had collected.

The Water Lord, despite being insanely powerful, had already been taken down by the demons. Its short visit to Harry's plane of existence however had wiped out at least one eighth of the demon's overall army. As he fell, he saw the way forward had been cleared by his troops, and a quick apparition placed him amidst the main body of his troops. The loud crack was purposefully done to alert everyone to his presence, and they responded immediately. The column split straight down the middle, which allowed Harry a clear shot directly forward with his spells without the danger of Harry hitting his own troops.

A wash of heat enveloped him a second later, as he witnessed the nearest and last of the destroyers fall. The runes in his clothes and transparent helmet absorbed the heat almost instantaneously. It placed an almost invisible shield around his body that steadily grew in strength the more heat was absorbed.

His battalion made good time towards their goal. The supporting troops around them executed their duties perfectly, which allowed Harry's group to rush forward. Within minutes, and with almost no casualties, they had reached the inner wards that surrounded the portal itself.

The portal was a deep purple that actually made his stomach roll when he merely glanced at it. If a demon portal felt merely strange to be around, this monstrosity felt entirely unnatural. He began firing Ward Hammers at the wall with half of his battlegroup, and the other half designated to watch their backs in case enemies approached.

While he fired Hammers at the wall, he scanned the area in front of him. It was odd. There was no one present within the inner wards beyond the Dark Lord Achenar. The bastard channeled power in an almost oblivious manner towards both the portal and the dozens of sacrificed former humans used to tear the fabric of reality to kick start the ritual.

He began to get a feeling. It was a thought that did not bode well for him and his troops. He could not shake it even as he tried to give an automatic denial the conclusions he drew. The more he looked around at mass of demonic troops behind him and the lone solitary figure before them; he could only draw one logical conclusion.

This was a trap.

The whole situation did not feel right, and when Harry's instincts spoke, he listened. And right now they screamed at him to make sure that he was the only person to go through this dome when it was time.

He gave his orders. "George! Angelina! Get over here."

The couple ceased their spell casts and instantly appeared at his side. "What's up boss?" said George. Jokes would never find their way onto the lips of George mid-battle, not since he was feet from Fred as he joked with Percy and died all those years ago.

"Guys, this just screams trap to me," said Harry, straight to the point, as he gestured towards the portal.

George looked around for a few moments, his eyes narrowed just slightly, before he slowly nodded in agreement. "What do you want to do, Harry?"

"I'm going to spring the trap. I want to be the only one to go through the initial breach. I want you to activate the battlegroup's portkeys the moment there is even a hint of something going wrong. Make sure the ward weavers are watching out for anti-port and anti-app wards out here. I don't want us getting caught with our pants down if this guy has one last present for us."

George looked at his friend of seventeen years. Harry could see he wanted to object, wanted to be there right at Harry's back like every Weasley that had died in the past decade had been. But he knew this time it was different. Too much currently rode upon Harry having someone trustworthy with their finger on the recall portkeys. He nodded his head, turned and saw Angelina nod as well before they turned and restarted their Hammer throws at the wards again.

The bad feeling Harry had returned full-force with the attention of George and Angelina back on the shimmering wall in front of them. It was almost a numbness, an omen, that _something_ was about to happen. He didn't quite understand the premonition, whether it was good or that it was truly bad. Just that everything was going to change.

Harry laughed out loud to himself, '_When the hell did I become as batty as Trelawny and start seeing the future?_'

He sat down on the ground and entered the near-meditative state required to collect magic to him. Anything at all would be helpful in the duel he knew was about to come. It did not hurt that, while within this state, he could feel the wards as they fell. In fact, they would be down in moments. He focused his thoughts upon the weaves directly in front of him. He wanted a hole to appear in the failing wards feet in front of him so he could get in front of everyone and take the first shot at Achenar.

The Dark Lord just stood there, straight ahead. He seemed to be deep in concentration while he regulated and pushed his power into the portal. Harry knew it could not be much longer before the portal stabilized and Achenar would likely break into a dead-run to escape.

It would be a race.

He felt the first tremor of the wards fall, and with it, Harry was already on the move. His intentions, while he manipulated the ward's weave, were for the spot directly in front of him to be the weakest place in the entire dome. The effort was rewarded when a ten foot high hole appeared right in front of him as he ran through it. His first spell was already on his lips as he passed the breach; a wide-area jungle brush dark cutter, overpowered beyond belief.

Almost every time he cast it, Harry wished he had known this spell during the war with Voldemort. All those times he had saw stupid Death Eaters lined up in a straight line. A spell like this would've easily cleaved dozens of the inbred twits in half at the stomach or neck and saved countless lives.

He used the cutter because, in a situation like this, there was no use firing blasting hexes or anything similar that would throw up debris. All it would do is block Harry's line of sight on his enemy since the target's goal was to retreat away from Harry.

To Harry's shock, the cutting curse passed right through Achenar without doing a bit of damage. Instinctively, Harry leapt to the side the moment this registered in his mind, as he figured out that this was part of the trap. His paranoia was rewarded when he felt the ground shake as he landed and a spray of dirt and sand hit his face. A two-meter wide crater was now found in the spot he had just vacated.

Achenar had appeared from where he had invisibly waited, rage in his eyes for having missed. He had stupidly dropped his disillusionment to gloat over Harry's body. The anger only clouded his thoughts for a moment before he opened fire again. Harry rolled to the side and attempted to apparate while on the ground before he realized there was a separate set of containment wards inside the dome. It was good his troops hadn't followed, as they would be trapped as well. He vaguely noticed the wards had strengthened as well. They suddenly had become twice as powerful as they were before his battalion had begun there assault

It was all a trap designed to catch Harry and his men, but it looks like the only fish Achenar had caught was Harry.

"What's wrong old man, missing a few people inside your little trap?" shouted Harry. An angry Dark Lord was dangerous. A furious and enraged Dark Lord would make mistakes, and that's exactly what Harry needed right now.

"You'll never leave here alive, Potter! Even if you do defeat me, nothing inside this dome will be left. You'll need to go through the Portal to escape my trap alive," screamed Achenar. His red eyes were livid with malice and the sweat of insanity gleamed upon his bald, tattooed head.

'_You're a bloody moron. Another failure at evil villain school_,' thought Harry to himself.

In fact, Harry felt a twinge of disappoint. In the end, Achenar just revealed himself as a moustache twirling baddie prone to speeches and theatrics worthy of any Muggle blockbuster movie. He had just told Harry that the dome would likely kill everyone inside. Even Achenar knew Harry's battalion carried synchronized emergency portkeys. If Harry activated his, even behind a ward preventing its use, all linked portkeys would instantly fire and evacuate Harry's men and women.

"So you expect me to stand by here and graciously allow you to kill me while my friends watch. You really are an idiot." Harry dodged a killing curse and responded with a bonebreaker chain which managed to connect on almost every other spell. One of the successful spells was a banisher, which threw Achenar back to slam against the solid wall of the wards.

"_Ferula!"_ Achenar shouted while he pointed his wand at the bone that protruded through his tailored black pants.

"You got lucky there, Potter. But I don't see y—" Achenar was cut off as another chain of Entrail-expelling and acid-based metal-bulkhead cleaning spells flew at his head and lead along a path that assumed Achenar would dodge to the right.

Unfortunately for Harry, Achenar dodged left and would've had a clean shot at Harry if he wasn't already on the move himself. Harry was slowly worked his way to the portal in an attempt to figure out a way to disrupt it somehow to prevent Achenar's escape. He swore as he felt the sacrificial empowerments protected by a third set of wards, so Harry knew there was no way to obliterate that quickly enough to shut down the wards. The only way to possibly survive this was to kill Achenar and hope whatever trap he had sprung would not be linked directly to Achenar's death.

A volley of killing curses was sent again towards Harry as he pondered this, which were easily avoided and blocked with random debris in the field. A messy field was a dueler's dream. He would've thought Achenar would've been smart enough to not leave large sized chunks of rock lying around, but Harry apparently overestimated his opponent's preparedness for this encounter. Achenar seemed to have gambled everything on a doomsday trap that had unbelievably alluded to aloud. Harry had never had the opportunity for a one on one duel with the Bad Man who had started this war a decade earlier.

So far… he was not that impressed.

Harry responded to the killing curse volley with one of his favorite and simplest strategies. He purposefully flung spells to Achenar's right along with a silent and wandless '_Acio_' at a rock directly behind Achenar. The simple trick worked when Achenar again dodged left directly into the path of the oncoming projectile. It collided with the back of his skull with a sickening crack, which sent him flying forward. Harry immediately summoned the Dark Lord's wand and launched piecing hex after cutting curse at the temporarily stunned Dark Lord. Achenar was smart enough to move even after he was concussed with a fifty pound rock, but his dodges were way too slow. The result was three piecing hex's to the dead center of his chest and one arm and leg cleanly removed.

The Dark Lord Achenar was dead before he even stopped moving. A small blast of controlled Fiendfyre ensured the body would never be reconstituted or used in some future dark ritual.

Afterwards, Harry was alert for whatever madness Achenar had hinted was coming next. The wards that protected the Portal's power source looked untouched. Those that surrounded the inner crater had come under an even more massive onslaught, as the victorious Earth's army continued to batter them down in their hopes to get to Harry.

He saw their silent cheers through the wards, and the Ward Hammers briefly let up. To warn them of likely danger, Harry sent up purple colored sparks.

Purple Smoke and Sparks were the universally agreed upon signal for an imminent trap. Immediately Harry could see his forces begin to Apparate out except for his own battalion, who were relentlessly tried to bring down the wards to get Harry to safety. They were almost there in fact. Just a bit more and the wards would fall again. Harry still had no clue what the trap could possibly be.

That's when it hit him. The trap was obviously not tied to the pile of ashes now known formerly as the Dark Lord Achenar. Whatever traps present were tied to the wards themselves. He tried to wave off the Weasleys, and threw more and more purple sparks into the air. He grabbed his portkey and activated it in the vain hope it would at least send his battalion away, but some of them had proactively thrown their portkeys on the ground. Their desire to help Harry after he had done so much to help them had outweighed their own sense of survival.

Harry looked around in desperation with the knowledge he still had to find a way to save himself from this trap. What could the Dark Lord possibly inflict upon him where Harry's only choice would be to head into a portal as an escape? Explosions? Poisonous gas? More demons? Draco Malfoy clones souped-up on Love Potions?

Whatever it was, he turned his thoughts towards his own escape. The portal was obviously connected to some demon realm currently, and that was the last place he ever wanted to visit on a one-way permanent vacation. He knew portal disruption spells, he wondered if they could be used to point the portal somewhere else… anywhere else.

He began launching overpowered disrupter charms at the portal, pouring all his magic into his hope that it would be enough to destabilize and change the location the portal was currently aimed at. The spells quickly had a visible effect. The unnatural aura of the portal changed to one that was almost welcoming. The color of the swirling event horizon shifted from that sickening purple to a swirl of light green and brown earth tones. The magic the portal radiated now seemed almost warm and friendly. There was darkness that was easily identifiable, but the light clearly out shown the dark. And if Harry didn't know better, the magic almost seemed to plead to some base instinct of Harry's for help.

His thoughts about the portal's new destination abruptly halted when he felt the inner crater's wards fall completely. Suddenly, the entire outer ring of the crater burst into a spontaneous conflagration of Fiendfyre.

It was massive. A ring of fire a thousand feet across that grew in size the more it consumed. Magic was rampant in the air after the wards fell, giving the cursed fire all the fuel it needed to quickly envelop everything nearby.

'_At least most of them portkeyed out,_' were the only thoughts Harry could spare time to devote towards the hundreds of troops he knew at that very moment experienced painful immolated deaths unless they had the presence of mind to teleport out.

Harry again tried to apparate and portkey again, with no luck. He even switched to his Phoenix's animagus form and tried to flame out and was met with a solid wall which seemed to freeze his insides. He experienced pain throughout his body as anti-animagus wards tried to exact their punishments upon him. He wouldn't even have the opportunity to fly out under his own power as a phoenix.

He even called his house elf Kreacher to him, but didn't get a response.

He transformed back to his normal form, and backed slowly away towards the portal. Desperate thoughts of escape crossed his mind, but nothing came to mind that didn't involve a jump into a portal that would take him to another universe. Harry holstered his wand as he drew within ten meters of the edge of the portal as he realized it might truly be his only means of escape.

If he had more time, he could pull a broom out of either of his shrunken trunks, but that would take precious seconds he did not have to waste since his brooms were not in the initial expanded spaces of the trunks. More than likely, he would only get to the trunk's third or fourth compartment before his goose would be cooked by the wall of fire. To add insult to injury, he had no clue if the Dark Wanker had put up anti-broom wards to make the entire idea useless anyway.

He looked back at the wall of fire. It was huge and edged nearer. His personal shield looked almost solid from the amount of heat it had absorbed, but there was no way for it to survive Fiendfyre. Cursed flames fed off Magic and not oxygen for fuel. When these flames connected with Harry's shield, it would violently burst into magical flames with the force of a small bomb. There was no point to stay around long enough for that to even be an option.

He looked straight up. If only he had ever taken the time to learn how to fly under his own power like Riddle and Snape had done all those years ago. That could've saved him here. They had flown magically right through Hogwarts' wards, and that would have been a nice crutch for times when anti-animagus wards killed his phoenix form's usefulness.

He couldn't see a way out.

In the end, the choice was made for Harry. The wall of flames hit the sacrificial power source of the portal, which created a shock wave as the magical backlash lifted Harry into the air and flung him straight through the center of the portal. His last conscious thoughts while on the planet of his birth were of the clear sky above and whether, if he died in another realm, he would still be able to see his parents in the afterlife.


	2. Senseless Death

**Summary:**

Harry Potter / Star Wars-over. While leading the final charge against a retreating Dark Lord, Harry is thrown through a Demon Portal, landing on a strange world in a galaxy far away.

**Disclaimer**

I don't own Harry Potter in any way. JKR has those rights... Also, Star Wars is owned by Lucasfilm/George Lucas, etc etc.

***Author's Note ***

Inspirations: Sword and Magic by bluminous8

Chapter First Published: 2013-03-05

Chapter Last Update:

**Chapter 2 – Senseless Death**

Harry had finally discovered a magical method of travel worse than apparition, portkeys, and the floo combined. The lights and flashes he saw made him nauseous, and it was all he could do to not throw up.

He found himself falling end over end for what seemed like hours but could easily have been minutes before he was unceremoniously expelled into a marshy field. He looked up just in time to see flames from the explosion burst from the portal as it closed, which left Harry in an eerie silence. Slowly the somewhat familiar noise of bugs, birds, and other animals came back as they recovered from the startled silence that was induced by the deafening roar of the portal.

There was no longer any sign that there had ever been a portal there, other than one solitary human who had no clue just how far from home he was at the moment.

He stood up carefully, and simultaneously checked himself over for injuries and attempted to squash down the sense of panic in his stomach that had begun to mount. Harry took stock of his surroundings and himself. He didn't seem harmed, and all of his equipment was still with him, including his invaluable customized wand holster which looked like it was about to earn its exorbitant price tag even more than it had in the past. He checked his clothes and armor, and found no tears or damage to anything other than his trusty helmet, which had apparently been lost. A quick stretch revealed that he seemed a bit sore from excessive magic usage, but at least his reserves were barely touched after he was able to gather so much energy from the Earth itself in his time of need.

His own health verified, he began to take in his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was the humidity. The air was stifling, especially in comparison to the sand-filled desert wasteland where the demonic portal had been summoned. The sunlight had an odd brightness to it that he normally associated with deserts along the earth's equator, and he instinctually threw some ultra-violet protection charms on his exposed skin. Sun poisoning combined with heat stroke was one problem that he did not need to have now.

He had been there less than a few minutes and he could already feel the sweat begin to pour down his face. A cooling charm alleviated the way the air seemed to coalesce around his head like a hot thick soup, and Harry figured he would have to be quite liberal with its reapplication over time if he was to be stuck here. If it was humid there were also likely to be bugs that carried diseases that would be attracted to him, so he put up a few charms to repel them as well.

As far as he could see, the place was half marsh, half-fungal heaven. If there was any question he was no longer on Earth, he had his confirmation when the size of the surrounding vegetation finally sunk into his dazed mind. There were flowers shaped like trees in every direction, some as tall as thirty meters, that glowed with an inner phosphorescence. Between the giant trees, the ground was covered with plants that could only come from an artist's dream world in the way they resembled absolutely nothing that Harry had ever seen on Earth. He could feel the magic they emitted from here, and as he stretched out his Mage Sight to view the world, he got the strangest shock of all.

Everything here glowed with magic. In fact, it seemed like the very air he breathed had it. All the plants in the vicinity glowed brightly to his eyes, where plants on earth would not even be visible unless they were something he knew could be used in some particular potion. He absently wondered quickly how many of these obviously magical plants could be used in revolutionary new portions or wand components.

As he held his Mage Sight and gazed in absolute awe of the surrounding area, his senses relaxed and involuntarily extended far beyond normal. They stretched out to encompass the immediate area, but didn't stop there. Further and further he mind reached. He sensed continents, oceans, and finally the circumference of the planet. The image in his mind that appeared was so clear that he felt he could apparate or portkey anywhere he wanted on this world without the normal inconvenience of having been there in person. The fear of appearing inside a mountain was the furthest thing in his mind. He felt he could instinctively picture an area and know that no natural feature of the land would harm him if he were to apparate there. Finally, his mental picture of the planet crystallized and he could quite clearly sense and feel two powerful magic users very far away.

His joy and wonder at having such a clear picture of the planet quickly ended when he realized that if he could sense others, the others may be able to sense him. A twinge of fear settled in the pit of his stomach, based on the possibility the unknown wizards could possibly track other magicals in the same manner as the demons did on Earth. In response, Harry quickly suppressed his magical aura down to the size of a flobberworm. No one would be able to sense or pinpoint him now in the amidst the massive magical background noise of this planet.

Aura suppression was something that he, and almost every magical person on Earth, was required to perform on instinct. The primary prey of demons were magical people. So, in a city full of six million people, if there was only one magical person out of all those six million, the demons would immediately attack and try to kill that person first. They would even do this if faced with more dangerous threats. The acquisition of the ability to suppress an aura almost round the clock became a tiring exercise, but eventually everyone learned it, or wizards did not stay alive long.

The feeling of safety returned, so he checked his gear just to confirm everything was still where it was supposed to be. His wand holster still had all five wands locked away, and his backup holster attached to his right calf still contained Voldemort's old wand. His forearm holster also had the two shrunken trunks that had collectively saved his ass so many times he couldn't count. Finally, his emergency potions belt was secure and intact. Not that he expected any of the unbreakable charmed vials to have taken damage, but the verification was more to just confirm the belt and all its contents were still securely tied to him and not lost somewhere in the twisting nether between worlds he had just passed through.

Next thing he had to decide is what to do next while he made the conscious effort to put home out of his mind. His rather extensive knowledge of demon portals revolved around the shutdown of those already in existence and not the opening of new ones. In fact, he didn't know a single thing about opening an extra-dimensional portal other than what was usually used in the process, and the sacrifice of innocent lives to utilize the energy of their souls was definitely not a price he would pay to get home. He was sure the collection of books in one of the compartments of his 'special' trunk would have no knowledge whatsoever on the subject.

If he was to be brutally honest with himself, he was lucky to have the information he did have. Hermione was only able to attain the knowledge currently in his possession by risking her job after she stole tomes from the Department of Mysteries. The Earth had been involved in a full-fledged war and the statute of secrecy had been utterly destroyed in the process. The very existence of all life on the planet was at stake and the thrice-damned Unspeakables still refused to offer information and aid. So it was one of the few times in her life Hermione willingly placed books in danger through her actions.

Harry dragged his mind back to the present and realized he needed to stay focused in order to not panic, but it was getting harder and harder the longer he tried to not think about his current situation. Everything he thought about made him realize exactly how perilous his status was. He had no idea what was safe to eat here or would poison him. He did not know whether the nearest settlement would be friendly to him. Finally, he had no idea if the two strong magic users would listen to him or kill him on first sight. He felt more alone than at any point in his entire life.

He shook his head and slammed down on his Occlumency shields to stem off the debilitating panic before it could take root. He temporarily accepted that a method to travel home was absolutely out of the question for the time being, and it would simply have to be something he researched later as time allowed.

Harry realized he had life-altering decisions to make and he needed to make them quickly. Did he try and contact the other magical users on the planet, or did he set up camp here. Either choice could be considerably dangerous. The magical users could end up not understanding him despite language charms and attack him. How he was going to covertly cast translation charms upon them without violent consequences was something he chose simply to not think about at the moment. On the other hand, if he tried to set up camp, he could miss an opportunity to acquire help. Not to mention the fact that staying stationary would likely mean any predators in the area could more quickly zero in on him and turn him into a fast meal.

Finally, he made the conclusion that he would never forgive himself if one or both the magical users could help him get home, so he decided to try to make contact. He looked around the clearing one last time and locked a clear image of the area into his mind. One day, if he ever attained knowledge about how to get home, he could possibly return to this spot if this location was required in some way for him to go back to Earth.

With the image forever burned into his mind, he reached out with his magic and tried to sense the two others without letting his aura flare. Both beings seemed to be roughly equal distances from him, but for some reason, something told him to try a specific one over the other. He paused for a moment while he mulled over the compulsion to apparate near that specific living font of magic. He wanted to make sure it was his own free will behind the decision, but there did not seem to be any untoward influence in the air and his Occlumency was at full bear anyways.

Harry decided to trust whatever instinct led him to this decision. He proceeded to disillusion himself, silence his feet, and threw the cloak portion of his uniform into one of his trunks for now. It would be no good if it caught on something and gave his position away. He centered himself within his mind, and once again marveled at the way magic seemed so saturated in the planet. The almost casual way it allowed him to sense far off places was simultaneously the coolest and scariest thing he had ever seen.

With that in mind, he apparated towards the person he felt the indescribable need to move towards.

-o0o0o-

He appeared silently and still invisible. As he looked around, he saw a giant flower nearby which would give him an excellent vantage point of the surrounding area. With the second apparition, he found himself upon a flower that may as well be a tree for how sturdy it was.

He had no need to use Mage Sight to find the person he was looking for. The person's magic screamed power and alertness to him. Despite the invisibility spell he was under and being almost thirty meters in the air with a suppressed aura, Harry unconsciously ducked down to avoid drawing attention. He caught his first glimpse of the source and nearly choked.

Below him, surrounded by a dozen humanoids in full body suits of white plastic-like armor, was a blue…

…person.

She was most-definitely not human. He had never seen anyone quite like her before. Her most prominent feature, beyond the blue skin, was the two tentacles about the length of Harry's arms which protruded from the back of her hairless skull. Part of her head was wrapped in a protective head guard that also had straps which wrapped quite elaborately down the tentacles. She wore skin tight leather pants and a leather top which left little to the imagination and proved beyond a shadow doubt this was a female. The leather top bared her midriff and showed quite a bit of her considerably ample cleavage, yet covered her arms down to her wrists.

Harry had never seen such a beautiful magical being in his life. He was counting Veela such as Fleur and her even more attractive sister Gabrielle in this statement. Harry just hoped the being would be friendly. She was obviously on high-alert, as were the soldiers which surrounded and protected her.

His instincts that helped him find Masterminds definitely worked overtime here. He could tell this woman was in charge of the detachment of troops that obediently surrounded her. The subtle adjustments they made to her movements and directions only reinforced this belief. The group as a whole seemed to be some sort of scouting or investigative party.

The troopers were a sight unto themselves. They wore white full-body armor, with a black protective shoulder pad that provided their shoulders and chest with additional protection. Their primary weapon appeared to be some sort of black looking gun held at the ready in two hands. Harry doubted their suits had cooling charms on them, so they had to be cooking alive in this oppressive heat. But they trudged on anyways, and Harry grudgingly gave them more respect for it.

He looked around and was startled to see even more troopers behind them. Then he noticed the huge lumbering mechanical animals that were the size of small buildings. The first impression he had of them was that they seemed to be troop transports. They looked to have massive guns in the "heads," and Harry swore to never piss these folks off unless he had no other alternative.

Suddenly Harry's senses shrieked danger at him as he heard a loud roar overhead. He looked up and saw a flying transport unlike any he had ever seen before. It hovered there for a moment over the endless field of flowers, and fired what looked to be large beams of light somewhere into the distance, causing an explosion, the sound and feel of which washed over Harry like thunder about ten seconds later. The flying thing moved off into the distance, the pilots obviously in search of a new target.

The whole scene had occurred in less than thirty seconds, and left Harry in awe and reevaluating everything Harry knew about muggle technology. He had seen non-magical weapons previously, such as missiles, projectiles, and even experimental rail guns. But what he just witnessed was on a whole new level to him. Weapons like that could have provided enough kinetic energy to drop the wards around demon portals far faster than his world's military could have dreamed. Maybe he could get some technology to take back to Earth if he ever managed to find a way back.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized this group couldn't simply be some sort of standard peacetime patrol. This group was at war with someone, which meant Harry was at a distinct philosophical and moral disadvantage. Which side was the _right_ side of this conflict? Was it the super hot blue alien chick below, or was it the unknown 'enemy' which he hasn't even had contact with.

Beyond harsh reminder that these folks were at war, he came to the realization that they were serious about their jobs. It would mean he would have to be extra careful when he attempted to make first contact or he would not live more than a few seconds with multiple guns like that trained upon him. He would be lucky in fact to not wind up in an interrogation cell. For some reason, the thought had only occurred now to him that what he was doing was a borderline wartime infiltration mission, and the insight actually depressed him.

Harry continued to shadow the procession for a few hours while he used as little magic as possible to hide from the woman below him. The only draw upon his magic was an occasional apparition, cooling charm, and _Aquamenti_ to replenish lost fluids, since he still sweat buckets despite the cool air the charms provided. He waited for an opportunity to introduce himself, but the timing never seemed right.

Occasionally, he noticed his target would glance at a flower he had just left, but never at the location of the new flower. He was definitely glad he had learned to suppress his aura, as Harry had no doubt the woman would instantly lock on to him if he were to walk around with his aura unrestrained. He noticed there were other search parties similar to the one with the woman in them, but they had no magical user, and her group was most definitely the lead party.

Then, just like before, he seemed to receive some instinctual suggestion. It was definitely reckless, but for some reason he felt it was urgent to move now. He got idea to flare his aura off to the side of the column of troops, which would draw the woman away from the main force. Thinking more about the idea, it would give him a chance to talk with her with only twelve additional guns pointed at him, rather than a few hundred. There also this sense that there was a pressing need to do this now, rather than wait any longer.

He apparated about two hundred meters to the right of the column of troops and flared his aura briefly before he suppressed it again. Instantly he felt the woman respond with a pulse of magic of her own as she went on high alert, and he noticed her aura flared brightly but definitely had not matched his own. In the distance, he could just barely see her break off to investigate. She moved much faster than the troopers who failed to keep up with the woman's run speed. She was in remarkable shape, and he swore she somehow used magic to move faster than any person should have any right to be move on foot.

The group was within twenty meters from Harry when he felt a subtle change wash over the troops that followed the woman. They slowly fanned out in a half circle around her. The presence of the troopers now screamed _enemy_ to Harry's senses. A sudden thought came to Harry as he observed the oncoming troops. The position of 'leader' of the approaching group had switched from the blue woman to one particular soldier with a yellow stripe on his helmet and armor.

Harry could see the trooper coordinate his troops in a subtle manner that oozed malevolence and cold precision. Harry instantly recognized their positions as the beginnings of an entrapment configuration designed to make sure no soldier was in another's line of fire as they targeted a position in the middle of their near half circle. These soldiers had a new target for their weapons, and their prey was caught in the net and she didn't even know it.

A feeling of absolute horror washed over him. Harry knew exactly what was about to happen. This woman was about to be executed from behind.

The blue-skinned woman was caught completely unaware of these events. No more than five seconds after the point where Harry realized something was wrong, the soldiers all collectively opened fire on the blue woman. She only had time to look around in shock and raise the cylinder clipped to her belt up in one hand before she fell.

Harry tried to prevent the soldiers from firing once he realized their intentions but failed to stop them all. Seven blue'ish white bursts loudly impacted the woman in the back before Harry raised a fist and wrenched his hand in a sharp rotation. As he did this, the heads of eleven soldiers simultaneously twisted completely backwards and their now dead bodies slumped to the ground as if their strings had been cut. He summoned and stunned the twelfth soldier, who had only looked around wildly after he saw his comrades' fall before he flew towards Harry and entered blissful unconsciousness.

While he ran over to the woman, Harry secretly thanked whatever deities continually watched over him. From the way she instantly fell and the number of impacts, Harry knew that there was the strong possibility that this woman faced paralysis in addition to death. The knowledge he had acquired of field medicine and his surgical training would save this woman's life or end it.

Harry fired the strongest stasis charm he could at her. His actions were rewarded when her body glowed a deep red, which signified she was alive but in severe critical condition. She, in fact, would likely be dead in seconds, but the stasis charm would keep her body alive for up to forty-eight hours as long as the woman's magical core was strong. This particular spell unfortunately had no benefit to muggles, since it relied upon the body's own magic to sustain itself.

The charm would preserve her body in its current state with no degradation the entire time. It could be lifted slightly to improve healing rates at the cost of reducing the overall length of time the charm would last. With this method, her body could be entirely healed without the loss of blood since the heart would no longer beat as well.

With the stasis charm successfully in place, he threw the strongest and quickest muggle-repelling ward he could muster. After that, Harry quickly implemented a half-baked plan he had come up with over the span of the last three seconds. The troopers wanted their leader dead, so Harry had to assume this was a mutiny of some kind on their part. He knew time was short and other soldiers would likely come and check up on them once it was discovered the scouting party was missing. He had to make her death look realistic so there would be no doubt in their minds that the woman was deceased.

Harry quickly stripped the clothes off of the stunned soldier. Harry got his next shock of the day when he found the soldier appeared to be a genuine human being. Harry also found he was right during his earlier musings: the soldier definitely was roasting alive in that suit, because the smell that emanated from the naked body appalled him.

With the stunned trooper naked in the half swamp grass, Harry pulled out his second trunk from his forearm holster. Harry quickly keyed open his private potions and consumables storage bay, and used an Accio to pull out a dose of polyjuice. He quickly ran over to the injured woman and searched her for any hair he could find. Harry knew polyjuice was never intended for non-human transformations, but the problems in those circumstances came from the reversion back, not the initial transformation. The trooper would soon be dead and be in no need of transforming back anyways. After almost twenty panic-ridden seconds of no luck, Harry finally noticed the only hair she appeared to have on her body was her eyelashes.

Quickly plucking one, he dropped it into the vial, which turned a color similar to turquoise. He went over to the soldier and banished the potion directly into the soldier's stomach. He was rewarded to see him morph into an exact naked duplicate of the woman his squad had just attempted to murder. Harry finished the charade by summoning some larger leaves from a nearby plant and transfigured them into copies of the woman's clothes and shoes. After a few quick switching spells directed at the newly created clothes, and there were two exact duplicates of the woman present.

A sudden noise startled him and, when he lifted his head up, he saw three squads had already traversed half the distance to Harry, so he knew he had to hurry. As he looked at the woman, he noticed the now magically frozen wounds upon her back looked like heat damage combined with a withering curse with the way they both cauterized the skin and inflicted massive localized cauterization. Firing a dozen curses to simulate the effect into the polyjuiced soldier's back, Harry than finished his faked death with a heart attack curse that would kill the disguised soldier five seconds later if he wasn't already dead from the damage to his back Harry had inflicted.

Now all that was left was cleanup and escape. He ran back over to the woman while he banished the solider's armor into the trunk, shut and shrunk it, and then summoned it directly into his holster. He then grabbed onto the girl and the metal cylinder she had unclipped from her belt and apparated one thousand meters straight up.

As he began to fall, he unholstered a wand and fired one of the few self-invented Battle Mage siege spells he had created. Harry designed the spell to be invisible while it travelled, so the victims would have no warning it was inbound. It wouldn't create the largest magical explosion he was capable of, but no one would know the attack came from above rather than by some random explosion on the ground. He fired it about twenty meters away from the mock blue girl's body, so that the explosion may jostle the corpse around a bit, but it would still be easily identifiable as hers.

After he unleashed the spell, Harry left the area via another apparition, this time while in the air. This time he travelled back to the clearing where he initially arrived on this new world. The body of his new patient was laid gently upon the ground, which left Harry with the dilemma of what to do next. He turned his sight outwards and checked the status of the other magical being he had sensed earlier that day. Only about two minutes had passed since the soldiers opened fire on the blue woman, so there may still be a chance to save the other person as well. He was easily able to determine the other person was still alive almost exactly where he had felt them before.

Harry's first instinct was to apparate directly to the person, seize them, and drag them right back to this spot. But there was always the chance the action could drop him into a full-fledged war zone for all he knew, and who knew how long it would take to return. In the meantime, he couldn't leave the blue girl here alone unprotected. He had seen a few large predators during the time he had shadowed the column of troops, and it would be his luck one of them would chomp down on his patient. Knowing the number of troops detailed by the white armored soldiers to kill the beasts, the idea of temporarily leaving the blue woman unprotected did not exactly seem like the proper thing to do.

Harry figured his best option would be to transfigure a heavy rock dome over the woman to protect her while he got the other magical. The transfiguration took a bit longer than he wanted since all he had to work with nearby was grass, but it was still done within a minute.

As he finished, he found his efforts to be completely in vain.

For one brief shining moment, he felt shock, than betrayal echo across every magical ley line of the planet. Then, it was suddenly silenced. Harry immediately reached out again, and had his worst fears realized. The second presence was gone, likely killed in a manner just as cowardly as the one attempted on the blue woman.

Without a second though, Harry immediately disillusioned himself again and apparated a fair distance from the spot the person died and hit the ground. Like he feared, he found himself in the middle of a war zone. Robots of all shapes and sizes on one side and more white armored troops on the other. Picking his head up, he gazed in the direction he knew he would find the body of the other magical user.

But there was no body. All he saw was a massive crater. There was no hope for recovering and healing whoever had perished so violently moments before.

With no more reason left to suppress his aura on the planet, Harry let go of his restraints and apparated back to the comatose woman now under his protection. With his aura loose and senses more fully extended, he was suddenly inundated with a larger sense of death from beyond the planet he was on. Elsewhere, somewhere way beyond his perception to pinpoint and locate, numerous powerful magical beings were dying sudden and violent deaths. Their final moments of pain and betrayal echoed loudly across the cosmos as they screamed for help. Harry reeled his senses back in since he had no desire to feel the constant aura of death and horror which seemed to still rumble and echo in the back of his mind.

After he removed the previously transfigured rock protections, he sat down and took a deep breath. He once again attempted to avoid the panic his mind so desperately wanted to fall victim to. '_One step at a time Harry, one step at a time_,' he repeated inwardly. As long as he didn't stop, as long as he had some purpose to keep going, he would not panic.

Harry took another look at his unconscious and mortally injured blue companion. This woman represented his only glimmer of hope now. And that glimmer had just shrunk exponentially if other magical beings who were probably her allies were being cut down in such a cowardly manner.

With a glance at his watch, Harry marked the current time. He had just under forty-eight hours to save this woman before the stasis charm drained her magic and expired, at which point her life would likely end afterwards. He rolled the woman on her side and silently thanked that all the wounds were center mass on her back. There was likely some deeper penetrating damage that extended past her ribs, but most of the damage would localized to the skin on her back, her spinal column, and her ribs.

He needed a place where he could heal her. A clean and safe place. The half-bog he was in now was likely the least sanitary place he could possibly do this. He needed a cave or shelter to heal her. He could possibly do it inside his wizarding tent, but that would also require him to have a safe place to pitch said tent. Again, a quickly cleaned, warded, and defended cave would be ideal for his purposes.

He was about to apparate to a nearby tall flower to try and find a distant mountain range when he suddenly felt that pull on his mind again for the third time. It felt just like when he felt the subtle urge to apparate to the blue girl and later to pulse his aura. This time, he received a faint urge to apparate to a specific place on the planet. He had never felt his instincts like this before, and he had never felt the urge to perform two blind apparitions in the same day, '_It worked once, hopefully it'll work again and not kill me._'

A quick prayer was uttered in the hope that 'the third time' would not be charm and lead him to harm, or mortal peril. Afterwards, Harry once again held the mortally wounded alien woman bridal style in his arms. He immersed himself in the feeling that his magic gave him, and disappeared with a large crack.

Harry reappeared at the base of a large mountain range. The mountains were a line of desolation surrounded by the forest of flowers that did not seem to be able to grab a foothold upon its rocky edifice. One hundred meters directly in front of him was a cave that appeared to be exactly what he had wished for. As he purposefully ignored the fact something way beyond his normal instincts had kept him alive and helped him make critical decisions, he scooped up the woman into his arms and ran to the cave.

He did his best to ignore that her gruesome injuries now pressed against the sleeves of his uniform. The stasis charm itself prevented her blood from flowing outwards other then what had already bled out from her injuries before the stasis was applied. The charm would also prevent most of the dirt and contamination from his uniform from entering her wounds. As he ran, he found himself surprised that she was very light. As curvaceous as she was, it apparently hadn't translated into a lot of weight. Harry for some reason mentally imagined her to be much larger than she actually was while he observed her today.

'_Maybe the soldiers were extremely short?_' thought Harry randomly, before he refocused on the present.

When he arrived at the cave, Harry set her body down on her side outside the mouth by a wall. He wanted both hands free if he had to attack an animal that had decided to make the cave its home. However, his paranoia proved to be unfounded. The cave was a rough circle five meters deep, with nothing at all living on the inside. It was as if it had remained undisturbed underground for eons and just this morning had the entrance exposed to the outside world.

He decided the cave was exactly the sort of sanctuary they needed, so he rushed back outside and used a _Mobillicorpus_ charm to float her body inside. He once again summoned and expanded his second trunk and removed a wizard's tent from the inside.

Harry always carried two trunks with him wherever he went when he was on duty. Years ago, he suggested to military leadership that all wizards should care a multi-compartment trunk that could be shrunken down easily. Its main purpose was to contain support hardware and supplies such as rations and field medicine. Harry's original proposal was that a small and standardized supply of potions could potentially save lives if injuries required things such as blood replenishing potions. Soldiers would be allowed to stock the additional two compartments within the trunk with whatever gear and other job related items they wanted. It was easy to sell leadership on the idea once Harry brought up the cost of training replacements vs. the cost of the trunks.

Regrettably, for Harry, the three-compartment trunk contained nowhere near the amount of space Harry personally wanted and needed for his gear. He initially expanded his general issued three-compartment trunk into a seven-compartment monstrosity on his own and filled it nearly to capacity with potions ingredients and a library of topics relevant to the war. The trunk became known far and wide after Harry was able to use rare herbs he kept in stock in his trunk to save one of his mortally wounded soldier's life.

Unfortunately, the brass got wind of the trunk and decided it didn't matter that Harry was using the extra space he had created himself to save lives. All that mattered was he utilized a non-standard trunk that did not have three compartments. In response, Harry very publicly cleared out and destroyed the customized trunk and replaced it with the standard three-compartment trunk that had absolutely no special features or items stored within it beyond the standard items issued to Harry and the rest of his troops.

What he didn't tell anyone beyond his select few friends and confidants was that he added a second hidden trunk slot to his general issue holster. This new trunk slot became home to a completely custom-built multi-compartment trunk that took Harry nearly a year to learn to build. It had everything his original trunk had, just in a far grander scale. It even contained a few excesses as well, as instead of seven compartments he upgraded to the next significantly powerful magical number of thirteen and found himself with more space than he knew what to do with.

With the extra space, he even converted one of the spaces into a fully functional apartment with shower, bed and kitchen. He never actually used the apartment for anything longer than quick shower, because he was paranoid about being stuck inside the trunk despite the numerous safety features he had installed. Harry's recollection of Mad-Eye Moody imprisoned for nine months in his own trunk occurred after Harry finished the apartment space. Plus a sane person just did not invite trouble by using something like this while being around George Weasley.

The contents of the second trunk were incredibly important to Harry, because, beyond the usual assortment of useful items such as wizard tents and extra brooms, it also contained potions that were far more useful than the standard array of medical consumables provided by the military. Harry's animagus form was a phoenix, and despite its rather conspicuous visage and Harry's reluctance to ever publicly use it, he religiously produced a quarter vial of tears a day through enforced crying sessions. Those phoenix tears had secretly saved countless lives during the war and likely were about to help the woman who floated right behind him into the cave.

With the duffel bag that contained the wizard's tent extracted from the trunk, a wave of Harry's hand yanked all the contents out. Another wave removed the supports and had them in the air in a roughly skeletal tent shape, and a third wave had threaded the supports gracefully into the inserts of the enchanted nylon canvas. A final wave tied all the supports together and anchored the tent to the rocky ground with automatic sticking charms.

He quickly entered the tent and conjured a medical table, which he laid the woman face down and maneuvered her head through a padded hole, which supported and immobilized her possibly injured neck. Harry banished the female's clothes to the side to be repaired later, and quickly covered her lower body. He sincerely did his best not to perv like a hormonal teenager on the attractive alien's briefly exposed bum and quite visible side-boob. Despite this, and countless hours in surgery where he witnessed the exact same view of injured females, he could not help but blush at the attractiveness of this particular woman.

With his patient secure in a semi clean room, Harry went outside and rummaged through another compartment of his trunk for pre-engraved ward stones. Normally Harry carried a variety of both pre-engraved and blank ward stones. One never knew when you needed to hide quickly or if you just needed a place where a ten minute highly classified conversation could take place with no chance of eavesdropping.

His standard wards for hiding were quick setups that contained very specific spells already engraved via runes upon them: _Cave Inimicum, Repello Muggletum, Protego Horribilis, Protego Totalum, and Repello Inimicum_ among others. These spells collectively notified the person who owned the wards if anyone of ill-intent attempted to enter them, repelled muggles and dark magic, and offered wide and closed area protections against other forms of injury and enchantment. The real kicker were the terror inducement wards that were present. Any animal that came near would feel an unnatural instinct to flee. Sentient beings would simply feel uneasy with a desire to get out of the area.

Harry took the two stones and placed one by the cave entrance, and another at the back of the cave. Picking up a stone from the cave floor, Harry quickly engraved a magical anchor rune on it and placed it back on the ground. Firing a charge of raw magic at both stones, Harry then pointed his wand at the newly created anchor rock in front of him and shouted, "_Fianto Duri_."

This activated the anchor behind the wards and reinforced them to the point where they became visible. After he charged the protections for a few seconds, they faded from view, but the hum of active wards stayed present. Harry quickly went inside and conjured a small metal blade. He took some of the still wet blood from the alien woman's back and gathered it on the edge of a knife. Running back outside, he went to the ward stone by the entrance, and dripped the blood on one specific rune on the cube. He vanished her blood from the knife and then sliced his own palm, dripping some of his own blood over hers.

Quickly healing himself, Harry pointed his wand at the now blood red rune and channeled raw magic through it. This particular rune set had taken ages for Harry to discover. He remembered his first encounter with useful ward during his sixth year of Hogwarts, when Draco Malfoy let Death Eaters into the school. During the battle. The Death Munchers had erected a barrier which only allowed those with Dark Marks to pass through it. Through hours of research and patience, Harry eventually discovered the charm and how to embed it into a ward stone. He learned to further tweak it so that it would only allow those whose blood had been dripped into the activating rune to pass through. Others could be granted permission to enter if they set up the ward, but it had to be done every time someone passed through the barrier.

The wards now shimmered into place over the mouth of the cave and the protections were fully keyed to him and his guest. This accomplishment allowed Harry to somewhat relax for the first time since he had arrived in the land of oversized flowers and white armored soldiers of doom. He almost felt safe at the moment, but he knew that was totally an illusion. In fact, he began to think this was definitely the most precarious situation he had ever found himself involved. His current list of _to-do's_ would have him heal someone whose back had just been burned off while on a different planet from where he had woken up in this morning.

'_Why can't my life ever be normal_,' whined Harry to himself as he walked back in to begin to tend to his last best hope of survival.

-o0o0o-

The second trunk followed him as he returned to the wizard's tent. He knew his potions supplies were limited now and weren't an infinite resource, and he had the raw ingredients on hand in storage to maybe replace half of his existing stock if used. He realized he needed to be careful, and that every move, spell, and potion used from here on out had to be second-guessed, because he couldn't afford to waste anything.

It was pressure like he hadn't felt in years. Once some of this stuff was gone, it would likely be gone forever. Dragon's Blood for blood replenishing potions would likely be the hardest thing to replace. He sincerely doubted he would ever find anything as magically powerful and versatile as that particular fluid again. And it was just the tip of the iceberg. He could only think to preserve a little bit of each specimen and hope to somehow mimic its properties using technology these advanced people hopefully had in their possession.

As he looked over his patient, he decided it was best to do things by the book and attempt to get a standard diagnosis of her condition. What truly scared Harry right now was the fact she wasn't human. He had of course treated non-humans in the past, but he always had a frame of reference and at least some background information. Most life-forms on earth were usually quite similar to humans when everything came down to it. He had no idea if her internal organs were even remotely similar to females of his own species, or if a potion given to her would potentially harm instead of heal. Feeling it was best to cross each of those bridges as he came to them, he conjured a pen and pad of paper, linked the pen's actions to his mind, and began casting diagnostics upon the injured woman.

The medical diagnosis spells he cast ranged from general medical information down to incredibly specific spells. Since there was no need to search for magical diseases, he skipped that entire branch of incantations. He decided to get a broad overview of her body and condition through more general spells that analyzed her overall health, circulatory, nervous system, pulmonary, musculature, digestion, and skeletal structure first.

He found a few things that varied from the standard humanoid from earth besides the obvious tentacles on her head. She had two stomachs and an extremely heightened metabolism. Also, her ears were external and conical in shape, which likely increased her auditory range and sensitivity considerably further than Harry's.

He received a shock when he discovered the tentacles that protruded from the back of her head contained extensions of the woman's brain. There were no bones present within the appendages, just a large amount of cartilage and muscle, which likely provided a small amount of prehensile movement. Relief flooded him when he realized the unknown appendages had emerged completely unscathed during the firefight in which their owner became a victim of attempted murder. They had likely been inches away from being hit by those seven shots that had impacted her. He had no clue whatsoever the course of action he would have had to undergo in order to heal them if they had been damaged.

After his general spells had finished, he focused his examination more upon specific regions of her back where vital internal organs were just barely below the visible exposed surface of her wounds. Some of the burns had destroyed all the skin and muscle tissue, which left her some of her slightly blackened white ribs exposed to the air. Surprisingly, this fact did not concern him in the least. Muscle, skin, and bone was normally easy to replace after all, as long as the wounds were not cursed.

What did bother him was the status of the internal organs just centimeters below those damaged ribs that had likely received devastating heat damage as well. Luckily, the incantations Harry utilized consistently brought back results to analyze. So, despite a non-human target, the spells still apparently found plenty of applicable information that could be used to make a proper diagnosis.

With her general back and internal injuries documented, he moved on and thoroughly examined her spine. The main focus of his attention was each place an impact had burned away or damaged the central strand of nerves of her spinal column. He absently noted three places where he identified the nerve bundle had been damaged. These would take special spells to repair. Any nerve damage incurred over the rest of her back was inconsequential to Harry, since those nerves would be rebuilt when he regenerated the burned muscles themselves.

Spinal cord damage was something Wizards far exceeded their non-magical brethren in healing. Nerves just needed the right amount of coaxing to regenerate and repair. There was always a possibility of a bit of therapy required, as some neurons needed to be rewritten to accommodate a new pathway that had been created. But things like that generally took days rather than the normally required months of physical therapy.

The final analysis he decided to focus upon was the amount of muscle mass to restore. It wasn't enough simply to repair her damaged muscles. Professional pride meant he had to try and return them to as close to the size and condition as they were before her injuries were inflicted. Harry found that good magical doctors were separated from great ones by how closely they attempted to return their patients to their previous health. He would never just go through the motions and release a patient whose repaired injuries were a pale shadow of their former vitality.

This woman, from what he observed today, was an athlete in tremendous physical shape and her body a finely oiled machine. It was Harry's duty to ensure that, when she lifted herself out of this bed, she was as close to her previous health as possible and could walk, move, and fight without pain.

After ten minutes, he finished his last scans and began to read the results of his spell work. The blue woman seemed in absolutely excellent health. Far better health than Harry and he did his best to train with his battalion every chance he got. The spells placed her age around thirty to thirty-two Earth years of age. The diagnostics found indications of numerous old injuries that had been occasionally repaired with magic, but more often than not healed via muggle means. Some of those injuries still had the potential to be further healed, strengthened, and refined.

Despite indications of magical healing, Harry found no evidence of magical potion consumption, though he found the remnants of a massive short-term exposure to some mind-altering chemical that was still present in some of her fatty tissue and her two brain appendages. '_A purging draught should take care of that easily enough_,' thought Harry.

The Skele-Grow test spell confirmed her species was one the potion could easily treat. None of the injuries to her bones from today's incident would require vanishing and full regrowth. All she would be required to do is ingest a small dose of Skele-Grow to repair the flash burns and bruising they had taken from the kinetic force that impacted her back along with the intense heat.

The internal injuries didn't seem bad either. The scans showed her physiology to be remarkably similar to humans, so Harry felt that he could more than adequately interpret the results of his scans. Fortunately, the scan results told him her injuries didn't require any particular special healing spells to mend. Her ribs seemed to have absorbed most of the damaging energies successfully and protected her more vital organs. A combination of spells and an injection or two of phoenix tears should easily repair everything so that they were in better health than before her injuries occurred.

That left the muscles and skin of her back to repair. The muscles could be restored with a muscle growth potion and then further aided by more phoenix tears. Normally potions needed to be keyed to a certain species. Once keyed, it was impossible to give the potion to another species. Hence if a potion was keyed to a human, a near-human species like a Veela would have some luck with the potion, but a house elf could very well be killed by the tissue rejection the potion would force the elf to endure.

It was the wide variety of magical species that fought in the Demon War which led Harry to stock nothing but unkeyed potions and force all hospitals he aided to do as well. If he added a bit of her healthy skin tissue to a few vials of muscle rebuilder mixed with phoenix tears, it should easily soak in and regenerate all of her lost and damaged muscles. A few targeted spells to direct the muscle formations to be at a specific level of strength would decrease her downtime as she does whatever limited reconditioning her body her body needs to recover from this whole fiasco.

Finally, that left the skin of her back. The scar tissue initially formed would be unavoidable with the first treatment he would give. Non-magical cuts were easily healed with a quick spell without scars. Burns such as this however were an entirely different story. At least they were not caused by magical fire. That was an entirely different ballgame to heal and there would be no chance of removing the scars created in those situations. As it was, the woman's scar tissue could eventually be healed with a long-term regiment of spells and/or potions Harry was more than happy to provide.

The scan results also indicated her heart had already stopped by the time Harry had placed the stasis charm. A quick Crucio would be more than sufficient jump start her heart and would be the first course of action after the stasis was lifted. Early in his healing training, he researched magical methods of resuscitation. Harry quickly determined Crucio was the magical equivalent of a defibrillator. Despite all their advances in medicine, Magicals had never developed or even pondered a method that would restart a heart that had stopped.

Any act that brought the "dead" back to life was a taboo that was never broached or suggested within magical hospitals, even though that technically was not what happened. CPR and defibrillators were foreign concepts to the wizarding world, and it was laugh worthy to see uptight pureblood traditionalists screaming of necromancy when the subject was first discussed. The snickers and outright laughter of muggleborns and half-bloods more than made up for the arguments that ensued.

Harry felt that all of these procedures combined should heal the woman. He had previously healed injuries far worse and this time he actually had a somewhat clean and stress-free location in which to complete his work. The only difference was that Harry had a personal investment in the case to ensure that the woman survived.

When Harry finished his analysis and had meticulously documented how he would treat the woman, he walked over to a couch and sat down. He would double-check his plan of attack in a bit, but for now he needed to eat and rest. He had been going strong for at least sixteen hours at this point, and he needed to keep his strength up to not lose focus and make a mistake. After a quick meal that had probably been stored in the tent for years, he changed his battle robes into something a bit more comfortable. Then he decided to get one last breath of fresh air before the marathon healing session began.

As he stood at the mouth of the cave, Harry took a deep breath of the rapidly cooling early evening air. It was a bit after sunset, and dusk had fully set in. The colors of this world never ceased to amaze him. The luminous flowers that had been fairly bright in the stifling heat of the day lit up like a busy metropolis during the night. The twin gorgeous moons of the planet plus near neon brightness of the flowers meant that night would never truly set upon this strange world. It was one of the most amazing sights he had ever witnessed and he would have to remember to take a few magical pictures of this place. He half wondered what the night side of the planet would look like from space, and decided that would be an image worthy of acquiring as well.

'_It might just be an excellent vacation spot someday. That is, if this world didn't have legions of psychopathic soldiers and robotic armies destroying their human overlords. Guess no place is perfect_,' laughed Harry to himself.

The laugh made Harry think of George, who had been one of Harry's lone sources of entertainment lately. On a whim, he pulled out his wand and incanted, "_Expecto Patronum_".

He mentally told the phantom stag that appeared to deliver a message to George Weasley and said out loud, "I'm fine George, though I'll probably never get home. I hope everything back on Earth worked out. Say hi to Angie for me. Love you all"

The stag however didn't move. It simply gazed at Harry for a few long moments, before it slowly lowered its head and faded away. The target could not be found, and its message was undeliverable.

'_Well, there's always the really unthinkable chance they didn't survive the last battle_,' pondered Harry. Then he realized who would definitely be alive, '_Hermione_.'

He repeated the spell and message to the same end result. The stag simply stood there and stared into his eyes before it reluctantly again dropped its gaze to the ground and faded away.

An involuntary sigh escaped his lips and he closed his eyes in resignation. He let his mind wander one last time. There was a strong likelihood he was never going to see any of his friends again. Never hear George laugh or tell a joke that earned him a slap from Angelina. Never see Hermione bite her lower lip while she researched some breakthrough which would ultimately benefit all of mankind.

He tried to look on the bright-side. Was there anything positive about this he had just gone though?

Harry realized this whole fiasco now meant he could live a life without expectations. No one knew him here. He wasn't the Boy-Who-Lived. He wasn't the Man-Who-Conquered. And he wasn't the Mastermind Slayer.

While he would also classify himself as a man without any resources and identity, he did however have most of his important worldly possessions strapped to his forearm. '…_And at least I'm free of all hyphenated titles_,' Harry chuckled to himself.

Harry hoped the woman would help him when she regained consciousness. He didn't want to think about what would happen if she was hostile towards him. The worst case scenario he willingly let himself ponder would be that she couldn't remember the attack and didn't believe the circumstances around her injuries. He had a Pensieve, but that would only work so long as she believed it wasn't a fabrication and agreed to view the memory in the first place.

He shook his head to brush off the negative mood that threatened to envelop him. '_No use in worrying about it now. What happens will happen. I have to heal her first to even get to the point of worrying about her rejecting any offer to work alongside each other_,' thought Harry.

He returned to the tent, where he immediately extracted the potions and medical tools the surgery would require. He liberally removed stored vials of phoenix tears. Once upon a time he thought about selling them for money, but now he was glad he never did. The money he would have acquired would have done nothing for him now. The extra resources he had at his disposal more than made up for it.

With everything prepared, he walked over to the table the woman lay upon and took took one last look down upon her. She truly was beautiful. Any male he knew, and quite a few females, would fall over themselves for the chance to date her. A bunch of humans just tried to murder her though, so it was doubtful she would ever start something with another one. At least that's how misguided hatred worked back on Earth.

Shaking his head at the absurdity of his thoughts, Harry withdrew a wand from his holster. He floated a syringe full of phoenix tears from a nearby table over to him, he set about isolating the first internal injuries in her back he needed to heal.

-o0o0o-

Three and a half hours later, a mentally and physically exhausted Harry collapsed upon a leather chair in the corner of great room of the tent. He was quite pleased with his work. Years of observation and then practical application in military hospitals had honed his healing skills. Healing was always something he enjoyed. There was far more satisfaction found when he put someone back together than it was to destroy a large force of faceless enemies.

The phoenix tears had once more proved just how valuable they were. The woman's physiology had one of the most dramatic reactions to the tears he had ever seen. Spells that should have taken thirty minutes to produce results did so within seconds with the tears support. After he saw the initial reaction he decided to be even more liberal with the use of the substance. He often hoarded it in the past, simply because it was such a rare resource that he didn't want it confiscated by the military brass to heal some nameless face he would never meet. Its use on virtually all of the blue woman's injuries definitely made him feel his previous secrecy was worth it. Even the scars on her back were minimized. With luck, they should only require a few short weeks of minimal treatment to look like nothing had ever happened to her. The tears were truly wondrous.

The speed at which they worked also surprised him. He had expected to treat her injuries for another six hours before he would stop to sleep, whereupon he would get up and continue her treatment. Instead, the desired results happened far quicker than he had ever anticipated.

He could not understand why though. There were three distinct possibilities he could think of as a root cause. One, the woman's body was responsible and had some natural healing abilities. Two, the planet and its strange echo-like version of magic was somehow behind this. Or third, and most improbable, he had suddenly gotten much more powerful and better at healing than he previously thought.

Whatever the cause, it was quite welcome and he would worry about it later.

The Skele-Grow potion plus injection of tears into her bloodstream had also helped to heal old injuries that may have been minor inconveniences to her. She appeared to have sustained knee injuries in the past, and the remnant of one such injury was well on its way to a state of constant low-level pain in her right knee. The evidence of previous surgeries had not completely solved the issues, but the tears repaired the damage to the point she appeared to have never injured her knee at all.

After he double and triple checked his diagnostics to ensure he had not missed anything, Harry removed the stasis spell. He immediately hit her with a short burst of _Cruciatus_. Her back arched and her heart started to pump strong again. As he expected, she did not regain consciousness, so there were no unexpected after-effects of the stasis spell so far. People normally took a bit of time to drag themselves out of the depths of a stasis-induced coma, so he figured he had an hour or two before he needed to explain what happened.

His preliminary post-stasis scans indicated all her injuries were repaired, and she was now comfortably asleep after having her magical core drained a bit from stasis spell support.

While he pondered his next actions, he figured the woman might be in a better state of mind when she awakened if he put some clothes on her. He used a switching spell from behind to place a large oversized t-shirt upon her along with some sweatpants. There was no way any of his shirts could be worn by her with the size of the appendages on the back of her head. They would never make it through the hole in the t-shirt. He then raised her into the air, and transfigured the hospital operating room table into a queen sized bed and tucked her in under the covers

Harry's final act was to place a Consciousness Alert Ward around her bed, which would notify him to when she began to awake from her sleep. The spell was the bane of Harry's existence while at Hogwarts. Every student that passed through the doors of her hospital wing had always assumed Madame Pomfrey had some insane sixth sense. Her instinctual ability to know when a patient tried to sneak out of her hospital ward at three in the morning unnerved many that passed through her ward. It turns out each of the beds was charmed to let her know when someone woke up.

With the healing session finished far faster than he thought it would take, he realized he needed to now ponder what he would say to the woman when she awoke much sooner then he originally anticipated. Consciousness would likely return within the hour if her healing abilities were as remarkable as he guessed they would be. He decided to take another look outside and get some fresh air while he waited for the woman to wake. Upon his exit from the tent, he found it was definitely now well into the night of this planet. As he gazed around and tore his eyes away from the bright lights of the forest, he was shocked to see the outlines of three massive illuminated shapes that lifted off from the ground in the distance. The objects had to be huge, and they appeared to be leaving.

'_Looks like the soldiers are pulling out_,' thought Harry before the full implications of the solidiers actions sunk in. '_That's wasn't good. Those ships are obviously not going anywhere on this planet, so they may be our only ticket out of here.'_

He had briefly mulled over plans while healing the blue woman to stow away aboard ships with the blue girl to get off the planet to wherever the rest of the main part civilization was for this society. He just knew that there was no way this planet was the epitome of society in this universe. But with the ships gone, his one known sure shot to leave this planet had departed before his very eyes. Who knew that the soldiers would leave this planet after so little time had elapsed after they had killed their magical comrades.

Harry cocked his head as he suddenly realized something profound with that last thought of his…

Time.

For nearly the last decade, Harry had carried around a time-turner, gifted to him by Hermione. At the start of the Demon War, she had grown increasingly more and more frustrated with the Unspeakables lack of participation and cooperation. She did her best to smuggle spells, research, and books out of her department, but her coup de grace was the discovery of a mislabeled time turner that had been reported destroyed after Harry's Ministry of Magic misadventure during his fifth year. Hermione simply figured if it was already reported destroyed, no one would notice her giving it to Harry.

He carried the dangerous item around with him for years and never once pondered its use. In fact he often thought of it as more of a necklace at this point than an incredibly dangerous magical object. It only had seven grains of Time Sand in the hourglass. Each turn of the glass would consume one grain of sand and send the user back three hours. An additional person sent back would cost a further grain of sand as well.

Harry checked his watch as an idea slowly formed in his mind. It was now almost six hours after the initial attack. If she woke up soon and she was cooperative, she could help him raid whatever base camp was somewhere out there for supplies nine hours in the past. They could very realistically acquire food and medical supplies. If they were lucky, they could probably acquire and hide one of those massive gunships he saw firing under some wards as well. Who knows what else they could accomplish.

But it all hinged on the woman waking up soon, her belief and trust in his story, and then full comprehension of exactly what the consequences of time travel were. His spirits dropped at that thought.

'_How do you tell someone you can go back in time, then in your very next breath tell them they have to allow their fellow comrade to die because it already happened and you're not allowed to change it?_' thought Harry with sadness.

As he pondered this thought, he closed his eyes and continued to think about his options.


	3. Woke up to a Whole New World

**Summary**:

Harry Potter / Star Wars-over. While leading the final charge against a retreating Dark Lord, Harry is thrown through a Demon Portal, landing on a strange world in a galaxy far away.

**Disclaimer**

I don't own Harry Potter in any way. JKR has those rights... Also, Star Wars is owned by Lucasfilm/George Lucas, etc etc.

***Author's Note ***

Inspirations: Sword and Magic by bluminous8

Chapter First Published: 2013-03-17

Chapter Last Update:

**Chapter 3 – Woke up to a Whole New World**

Harry left the quiet solitude of the cave mouth and headed back to his Wizard's Tent. As he walked inattentively inside the shelter, he pondered the idea he just had. At the moment, it was a bare-bones outline of a supply raid on an unknown facility using a time-turner. He could do it on his own, but he would likely never recognize half of the technologies these people utilized, so he would need his patient's assistance if he wanted the mission to be a success. With no other options, he felt the best plan was probably still to stow-away on one of those three ships with his patient, but maybe she would come up with a different idea.

Ducking into the tent, he thought about how lucky he was to have it with him. He had never really used this particular tent before. It had been thrown into his trunk as an afterthought half a dozen years previous. Originally, he purchased the thing with the intention that it would permanently grace the inside of an empty compartment of a the trunk, but then he realized that would mean the trunk itself would be left unguarded somewhere with him inside it. He was still very paranoid about being inside the trunk. There were no good safeguards for an unattended trunk other than wards, and If someone managed to close it, he would be left a prisoner like Mad-Eye Moody had been all those years ago.

Sometimes he would use the tent if he was on a solo mission, if he had time to set up wards around it and wanted a hot shower and some freshly laundered clothes. Otherwise, it was an unnecessary extravagance that he had never found a reason to utilize. But now, the small family room, kitchen, single bedroom, bath and shower seemed like a palace to Harry.

The pre-stocked food was a godsend. Quickly rummaging through some of the notes he found within the kitchen, he estimated he had enough food here to last himself a full year by himself. If the woman found the food edible, it would cut the supply in half, though with her species having two stomachs, he wondered if she ate more than a Human. He doubted Earth military rations would be very appealing to her, and to be honest, they were not very appealing to him either. He would also have to find ways of freeing up extra storage for her if the woman stayed with him.

He packed up the random medical supplies that were strewn about the room into the trunk. It would at least save them some time if they had to move quickly later. Suddenly Harry had a thought. He realized that he probably should not allow her to see the tent yet because it would be just one more thing to explain to her and time was short anyways. Harry quickly levitated the woman's bed outside of the tent. A few waves of his hand had the tent completely disassembled and jammed back into the duffel bag it originally came from, which was then tossed back into the trunk.

The cave seemed strangely empty now, with just him and a very out of place bed with a comatose woman resting peacefully. He let his mind wander as he randomly paced around. Eventually though, the pink elephant in the room could no longer be ignored and he decided to stand vigil next to the azure woman. After all, there was little else he could think to do except wait.

He conjured a chair next to her, and sat with a fist under his chin. His mind wandered in the silence, but his thoughts simply would not focus upon one topic, and he eventually came to the random conclusion in his boredom that the cave was a bit too dark for his tastes. To solve this, Harry conjured a dozen blue ball flames and floated them into the corners of the cave for light.

Then, he came to another realization. Any language comprehension between him and the woman was completely out of the question. He pulled out his wand and cast a translation charm upon her that all magical members of the Earth military were required to learn. Since the armed forces of the Earth pulled soldiers from every country to fight the demons, it was a given that there would potentially be over a dozen different languages spoken within the same battalion of troops. The charm allowed the user to understand any language spoken aloud. Eventually the spells were refined further into earrings that could be worn. Unfortunately, it did nothing for reading comprehension, so shore leaves were still often recipes for disaster.

'_Well maybe not true disasters_,' chuckled Harry to himself as he remembered all the trouble George, Angelina, and himself had gotten into on during shore leaves early in the war in places where they couldn't read signs and directions, and refused to ask for help.

Harry himself had gone one-step further to avoid unnecessary trouble and undergone the very painful process of transferring full languages from native speakers. He went a bit overboard and learned all the languages spoken by a majority of the soldiers, which ended up being ten very painful experiences. There was no danger of running out of room in his mind at least. Rumor has it that's the way Barty Crouch Sr. knew so many languages was through this language transfer method. He would have to ask the blue woman later if she would be willing to transfer him any languages she knew.

His thoughts returned to his self-appointed vigil and Harry focused his gaze upon the face of his patient. He marveled at how stunningly beautiful she was. He was sure she was the object of numerous men's desires and he himself had no chance with such a being. In the grand scheme of things, he was nobody now. She was obviously important and competent enough to be in charge of a large number of troops and then be dangerous enough to be the target of a mutiny. It was obvious the execution attempt couldn't be called anything less since they had targeted the only two magical users on the planet. The strange echoes of death he had felt afterwards also gave him the impression that other powerful magical beings were dying elsewhere… far from the planet.

Suddenly a chime that only he could hear interrupted his thoughts. His patient was waking up, and as he looked down at his watch, he found they had less than an hour and a half before the nine-hour window elapsed.

-o0o0o-

Jedi Knight Aayla Secura felt horrible. Her head pounded in agony and she had no clue why it was doing so or what caused it to happen. Her mind was all a jumble and she felt as if a herd of banthas had stampeded over her body.

She tried to move, and found her body sluggish like it had been drugged. She immediately started to run through Jedi exercises designed to remove toxins from the body just in case her suspicions were correct. This ability would get her fully coherent and mobile long before whoever drugged her could have expected her to be. The small movement she had made also let her know her back was extremely sore and the slightest shift made her grimace with a dull pain.

"Try not to move too much just yet. You've been through a lot. Would you like some water?" asked an unfamiliar voice.

She snapped open her eyes at the unexpected sound. She was in a dimly lit cave with odd blue flames burning in the corners. What was even odder was that she was found herself in a very out of place and comfortable bed. There was a Human, dressed in strange robes sitting next to her. He had wildly messy and dark hair, and the most vivid green eyes she had ever seen. In fact, she didn't think she had ever seen a human with purely green eyes before.

Then she felt his presence…

'_By the Force, he's powerful_,' thought Aayla incredulously as she felt how strong the Force was with this man. '_He could give Skywalker a run for his credits._'

She tried to speak, but found her throat to be completely parched. Even though she tried to speak the words "Yes, please," the actual sounds emitted from her throat sounded nothing like it.

To her utter astonishment, the human pointed and flourished a stick in a complicated motion at his hand, and she felt a brief but powerful flare of the Force. A tall crystal glass appeared. Then, he pointed the stick again and a stream of water erupted and filled the glass to the brim. A final wave of his hand and a few ice cubes appeared at the top of the glass.

He saw her shock, and she noticed him furrow his eyes in confusion. "I take it you've never seen magic used like this before?" he asked her.

Aayla shook her head in response, and she just barely caught his wince at her answer. But her own thoughts superseded any thoughts towards his reaction. What she had just witnessed was an impossibility. He had created _something_ from _nothing_. It defied every bit of knowledge taught to her while at the Jedi Temple. Both the glass and the water in his hand should not exist.

'_It had to be some sort of illusion. And what about those brief spikes from the Force? Was that the start of the illusion Is this some kind of Sith interrogation technique?' _she thought.

"Here, please drink. I'll try and explain quickly. We're very short on time," he said politely while he handed her the glass. She understood the implied statement to not ask questions yet, and she could play along for now. The interrogation had obviously not gotten violent yet.

Their fingers briefly touched during the exchange, and it took all Aayla's increasingly diminished composure not to cry out in shock. She was an Empath, and the extreme emotions she briefly sensed from his touch startled her. Right now, when she wasn't in contact with the strange Human, she felt no emotions at all from him in the Force. If she based her awareness only upon Empathic abilities, she would have no clue the man was even there. His presence in the Force was bright as a star in the day, but nothing from his emotions. Yet when they briefly touched, his emotions seemed to flood through her. Nervousness, waning hope, suppressed despair. She goggled internally at how he could he appear so calm on the outside yet outwardly restrain the presence of such turbulent thoughts. Then she realized that she had never heard of an interrogation technique that could mimic Force presence, let alone her empathic abilities.

The stranger noticed her mind's distraction while still had not yet touched the water. He gave a mischievous smile. "You know I haven't poisoned that?" he said as he gestured at the glass of water she still had not drunk. "It would be awful silly of me to poison you after I just spent the last seven hours trying to keep you from dying."

'_Dying_?' Aayla suddenly thought as her eyes involuntarily widened. Had she almost died? She looked down at her body to check for wounds and was surprised to see herself clothed in strange garments of a type she had never seen before. In fact, she had no idea how the clothing had even been put on her since her head was larger than the hole in the shirt.

The human grimaced in apparent realization he probably should not have said that, "Ok, sorry. I think I'm just confusing you now. How about we introduce ourselves?"

He took a deep breath and said, "My name is Harry Potter. I'm from a planet called Earth. I doubt you've ever heard of this planet, right?" Aayla shook her head. She had seen Humans of course, but none that possessed the startling eye color this one possessed.

She collected herself, and did her best to sound confident, but the situation and lack of use of her voice betrayed her nervousness, "My name is Aayla Secura, I'm from the planet Ryloth and I'm a Jedi Knight."

She watched him as she spoke. He nodded at the information, yet showed no recognition at anything she said, even the word Jedi. Just what was going on here?

"Nice to meet you, Aayla. I doubted you had heard of my world. I doubt anyone has heard of my world in fact."

She wanted to protest his statement, but he held up a hand to forestall anything she might say.

"Yesterday, my world fought what we hoped would be our last battle against a large invasion force that we've been at war with for ten years. They used portals to bring themselves to our world from whatever universe or dimension that they came from. We finally beat their forces back until they were all at one location. They were gathered in a large crater around a single portal they were trying to use to escape our planet."

"However, it turned out to be a trap. I was the leader of our ground forces. Fortunately, I was cautious enough that I think I was the only one to fall into the trap. I defeated their leader, but he managed to fence me in the area around the portal and gave me a choice. I could die in a massive explosion, or jump through the portal to whatever dangerous world he had set it to take me."

The human smirked at this point, and looked her right in the eye with those two amazing orbs of his.

"I made my own option. I destabilized the portal so it would be pointed at a new world, then got thrown through, and ended up here on this planet. With me so far?"

She felt her own eyes widen more and more at the story. She had never heard of such an occurrence throughout all her research on obscure topics within the Jedi Library. Most people and even other Jedi always second-guessed her or looked down upon her because of her appearance, heritage, and origins. Most people she met while in the line of duty took one look at her and assumed she must be a moron who used her figure and beauty to achieve what had accomplished. It just meant she had to work twice as hard to earn the respect she had gained.

She understood what he said at least, but she wasn't sure whether to believe him yet. Not being able to sense his emotions were quite disconcerting to her. The usual ways she utilized to verify information through the Force and a person's emotions were not available with this person.

He continued on with his story, "So I got here, and was amazed by just how much magic was in the air in this place. I stretched out my senses to try and sense what exactly was going on nearby, and was rather surprised that, instead of being able to feel an area the size of this cave like I was expecting, I could feel all the magic on the entire planet. And I felt two really powerful magic users on the planet along with me."

His eyes seemed to lose focus at this point, as he stared through the wall over her shoulder, definitely seeing something she couldn't see in his memories. "It was strange. I've never felt magic this strong before. And then I felt something… guiding me. I think it honestly told me I needed to apparate, err…. teleport to one magic user instead of the other to try to meet them. Normally teleporting somewhere blind is as dangerous as it is stupid. You can appear over an ocean, or inside of a mountain or volcano. But for some reason, I just felt I would be safe. So I teleported, and ended up about fifty meters away from you."

"Someone as strong as you was able to teleport near me and my troopers without me knowing you were there?" Aayla asked, very surprised, and a bit annoyed. That shouldn't have been possible. Her own Force senses should have picked up a being this powerful from miles away, likely even far further.

And what did he keep talking about Magic? He couldn't possibly believe what he does with the Force is Magic. Isolated civilizations sometimes thought that the levitation of small rocks and assorted parlor tricks were Magic before contact with the Republic was established. Yet the powers that Harry described were nothing like she had ever seen before. The whole situation felt more and more unbelievable the further along she went.

'_If I've been captured, and this is some sort of delusion based interrogation, why weren't the drugs being purged from her system? I've never failed to purge drugs in the amount of time this has taken so far. And why all the effort to come up with a ridiculous background story like this before asking me for information about the Republic._'

"I feel like I have to apologize to you. I followed you and your soldiers for a few hours yesterday. I was invisible and had my aura suppressed. It was something everyone I know had to learn on my own world. It was how the enemy hunted us. Wizards like me didn't live long if we didn't learn how to quickly become invisible to their senses."

Aayla watched as Harry briefly closed his eyes and she suddenly felt the man's presence in the Force completely disappear. His appearance did not change at all, but it was as if he was not physically there anymore. This was all too unbelievable. But she felt the beginnings of excitement in her mind. These abilities would be crucial for her fellow Jedi to learn. If this Harry person could teach them, they would gain a valuable weapon against the Sith.

"How did you do that? Can you teach me? My fellow Jedi would gain much from being able to hide ourselves from our enemies," Aayla asked, with a bit of excitement in her voice.

The human winced. "I can teach you, but unfortunately you will have a need for it a lot sooner than you will be capable of learning it. I have an alternative method to hiding you can use in the meantime, but it's not the best way. Let me finish my story first. Again, we're short on time."

Aayla nodded and acknowledged the mild rebuke. Harry was getting a bit agitated, and his composure was breaking just slightly. His aura was still non-existent, but she could now start to feel some emotions from the human as well. Very small glimmers of nervousness and worry had started to leak out.

Noticing this, she began to internally frown. Simulated interrogations Jedi underwent would often use delusions like this. But one of the reasons Aayla was always able to excel at fighting the hallucinations was that no emotions could ever be felt from the people questioning her. That was the problem. She was starting to truly _feel_ Harry as he got more agitated.

"I was following you because I was trying to figure out a way to talk to you and ask for help without all your soldiers shooting me in the head."

"Anyways, that's unimportant now. I need to tell you a few more things, and this is all going be hard to hear. What was the last thing you remember happening before waking up here in the cave?"

Aayla leaned back. What was the last thing she remembered? Trying to recall significant events of the day, she recalled their "Larty" gunship air support being ordered to take out a Separatist outpost they were approaching. She remembered sometime later the Force guiding her, wanting her to check on something just off of their patrol path. It had raised her battle senses and gave her the feeling she needed to pursue the disturbance.

Then… nothing.

"I remember sensing something. I tried running off to the side of the troop column to determine what it was, but I don't remember anything after I started making my way over to where I thought I felt a disturbance in the Force."

"You call magic 'The Force'?" asked Harry, his head cocked to the side in curiosity.

"Yes," said Aayla. She felt amusement that Harry thought of his powers as magic. "We often encounter younger civilizations that believe levitating objects and other small things are magic. They often have no idea the broader things the Force can accomplish after a lifetime of teaching and instruction,"

Harry nodded in understanding and gave a small smile. "Well, we can discuss the finer points of that philosophical debate later."

He paused and tapped a finger on the bed between them. She could see he struggled to work something out in his mind before he said it aloud. The feeling of agitation and even a bit of fear now had began to become palpable, when suddenly she felt it get smashed down and his emotions became silent to her. Aayla sat secretly in awe of his ability to control his emotions to such a fine degree. Even Master Yoda didn't have such fine control.

"It's what happened next that you'll likely have a hard time believing. As you approached me, twelve of those soldiers followed you. They were acting differently all the sudden."

At her raised eyebrow, he clarified, "One of my abilities that helped in our war was my ability to look at a battlefield or skirmish and instinctively know who the leaders are. I could pick out squad leaders, battalion leaders, and the Generals in charge of the whole thing. The whole day I was watching you and your troops, I could tell _you_ were the leader."

"But, when those twelve soldiers approached you from behind, I suddenly realized something. You weren't the leader anymore. "

Aayla balked at this statement. '_Not in charge of my own troops? What the heck was he talking about?_'

"The soldier with the yellow armor was now in charge. The only impression I got from him was pure malevolence directed towards you. He had his troops move into a half-circle around you, and then all of them raised those black guns and pointed them at you."

She felt her mouth physically drop. What he was suggested could not possibly be true. Clones would never turn on their commander. They were bred and programmed for obedience to the highest authority. If Aayla gave them an order, there was no way they could not perform the order, and there was no way they could mutiny and betray her without orders to do so. The only one who could supersede her orders in the chain of command… was the Chancellor.

'_No_!' she screamed internally in her mind.

The human reached out and held her hand after he bore witness to her internal debate and its conclusion. His emotions were suddenly clear to her again, and all she could feel from him was sympathy, and a desire to help.

"I couldn't stop all of them. You saw it at the last second and looked like you were going to defend yourself with that metal tube thing you had on your belt. You were shot seven times in the back before I could kill them. I managed to change one body to make it look like you, so anyone who found the group would think you really were dead. I got you out of there, and brought you here so I could heal you."

At this, she felt him suddenly spike with embarrassment as he said, "Oh!"

He let go of her hand, which gave a jarring loss of access to his emotions, which left her a bit hurt by the sudden void. His concern had been a small comfort while she could feel it and its sudden loss due to lack of touch was actually painful.

She saw him go over to the side of the cave, where she recognized her clothes were folded neatly. On top of the pile was her light saber. He walked back over and passed it gingerly to her. "I figure this is a weapon, and I know I'm rather uncomfortable if I'm around strange people and don't have at least one of my wands. Here," and he passed the light saber to her as he sat down again.

He was right. She did feel better, thought she could tell through her empathy that Harry meant her no harm. There was the larger issue that she now held a weapon in her hands. No interrogator provided a weapon to their prisoner. She was beginning to think more and more this wasn't an interrogation and could possibly be real. His presence was the rock keeping her mind on track, especially after she placed her hand upon his again after a quick inspection of her light saber.

"So my clones turned on me?" said Aayla, and even with her Jedi training she couldn't hide the bitterness in her voice. The reality that this whole situation may not be a hallucination just made everything worse.

She had fought with the Bly, Galle, and their regiment for years. They had fought and bled together. They had talked about their dreams and aspirations after this war had ended. She thought they were friends. She had even endured ridicule and slander when she had been accused of getting too close to Bly…

…and Harry said Bly was the one who led the group to kill her.

"Barriss!" Aayla suddenly yelled with the sudden realization. Her fellow Jedi Knight would have been alone as well when she faced the clones. She had to know what happened to her friend.

"What?" he asked in alarm.

"There was another Jedi Knight on the planet, Barriss Offee. I sent her today with some ground infantry to another region about three hundred kilometers from where I was at with my troops. We're here because the Separatists are poisoning the planet's water supply. She was going to make a run at one of the possible contamination sources."

Harry had held her hand through her explanation, and she felt a sense of sadness grow in him while she spoke, and his dread. She knew what that meant, even before she saw him close his eyes in an effort to work up the courage to say it aloud.

"No… No…No…" Aayla could not believe it. She buried her face in her hands and cried.

They had been betrayed.

One of her closest friends had been murdered. Barriss had likely been dead for hours while Aayla lay unconscious, completely unaware of what had happened. Then she realized just how close she had likely been to death herself and that she owed her very life to the man next to her.

"Aayla?" she distantly heard Harry say, but she was lost to her own thoughts to care.

The clones she trusted had shot her in the back, without warning, like cowards with no honor. She didn't know what to do. She and her friend had committed no crimes worthy of such a betrayal, so the action couldn't have been directed at her alone, but because she was a Jedi. If the clones had been ordered to kill her and Barriss here, it was likely they were doing the same everywhere throughout the whole galaxy.

Harry sat down on the side of the bed next to her and pulled her into a hug. It was gentle and she could feel how pure his intentions were. She could feel his pain as well. With a small gasp between her sobs she vaguely recalled his story about how he had been torn away from his entire world today. Both of them had lost everything and here he was comforting _her_ while she fell apart.

"Aayla, I need your help," he spoke softly, cutting across her increasingly depressed thoughts.

"I know this is hitting you hard. Can you hold it together for a few hours, and then I promise to be right here with you as you mourn your friends. We still may be able to make a small difference if you trust me."

'_Still make a difference_,' repeated Aayla to herself. Those were words that would rouse any Jedi from a pit of hopelessness. Unable to speak, she nodded.

"I'm not going to pretend I have even a small understanding of what's going on. But I think the soldiers have all left. I saw what I think were three massive ships take off from really far away about two hours ago. They were huge," said Harry.

Aayla felt herself blink after a moment's silence. Here was finally something she was familiar with. She cleared her throat and wiped at her eyes, while she pulled gently out of Harry's embrace a bit.

"They're called Venator-Class Star Destroyers. They are our orbital support platforms in space while we are deployed on a planet. They land in atmospheres only to deploy or pickup troops. If they landed, it means they've pulled out. There were three of them in the battle group I commanded. There are, dozens of Battlegroups out there with Jedi supporting their efforts."

She saw Harry nod while he processed this information. He looked back at her, and she was surprised just how much sorrow and pain she could see reflected in his eyes did not spread down to the rest of his face.

He spoke, "Well, we need supplies. Things like food, medicine, and information. Most importantly, I assume with what you just said we need a way off of this planet. I got the feeling earlier this place wasn't a center of commerce, and you just confirmed it," he said with a quirk of his eyebrow, which caused her to laugh in spite of the situation.

"The main way we could've gotten all of those just left with those three ships. That's why I'm going to suggest something that will sound… absolutely insane to you," he said, speaking almost tentatively at the end, his voice barely tinged with a bit of fear.

Her curiosity peaked. What could possibly sound insane after the borderline fictional story he had already weaved for her?

"I have something here that can help us," said Harry. "It's dangerous, and should only be used in extreme circumstances. In fact, I've carried this thing around with me for nearly nine years and I've never even pondered using it until today."

She could feel his fear. Well, it wasn't quite fear, she decided. It was more like extremely heightened wariness. His hand disappeared under the front of his robes, and lifted out an extremely small object on a very long chain.

"This is called a time-turner. If you wear it, and spin the hourglass, you'll go back in time three hours for each spin. I can take one person back with me as well. There's enough sand in this for the two of us to make only _one_ nine-hour-trip, and that's it. We can go back in time, and steal the supplies we need and hide on their ships before they leave."

Aayla could hardly believe what she was hearing. Time travel. She mentally shook herself. It was impossible. No one had ever managed to go back in time. The Republic had attempted for millennia to do just that through experiments, and had always failed in their attempts, sometimes with disastrous consequences. But with the impossible things she had just witnessed, what was one more thing for her to suspend disbelief and just go with it. Then she realized, if they could go back in time, they could save Barriss. They could warn the other Jedi.

"There's a catch to this Aayla. It's the really dangerous part of all this," he looked at her straight in the eye, and Aayla's knew he expected her undivided attention to be on him.

"You can't go back in time and change anything you've actually seen, heard, or _know_ has happened."

She felt the despair flood through her like a tangible wave. Her first instinct was to shout that he had to be lying. She would not be able to go back in time without trying to save her friend.

"Listen and let me explain, we're running out of time ourselves if we want to get back before the mutiny occurs where we'll be under less scrutiny. Imagine Time itself is like a string." Harry conjured a long piece of yarn out of thin air. She felt the small surge of the Force again, but was too engrossed with his explanation to care anymore.

Harry laid the string in a straight line on the bed. She watched as he pointed to two specific places on the string, and she saw the string turn red at the left and blue on the right at those places.

"Imagine this string represents Time. The blue part is where we are now, and the red is nine hours ago. If we use the time-turner, we don't really go back in time per se. What we've done, within the linear progression of Time, is create a bubble that will loop Time from _now_ around to connect with Time from nine hours ago."

With a flick of Harry's hand, she saw the blue section of string pinch into a small circle, and then loop around to join to the red. "When we go back, we are still on the exact same time-line that's already happened. We cannot change anything that we ourselves have witnessed occurring. We can tweak things, but we can't do anything that would actively change something that we know for a fact has happened. I wouldn't be able to stop you from being attacked, nor could I save your friend because I know for a fact both of those things happened. The moment you do change something, you create a paradox. Your friend Barriss can't be both alive and dead."

"I really need you to understand this. Time does not like paradoxes. If one is created, time reacts by simply annihilating all parties involved. If we actually succeeded in saving Barriss, she would die anyways, and since we were the ones messing with Time, we would be destroyed as well. Do you understand how important this is? I cannot help you change what we _directly_ know has happened."

Aayla noticed he stressed the word '_directly_' like he was trying to tell her something. In fact he looked at her now as if beseeching her to understand some clue that would answer her prayers.

Then it hit her.

She didn't know what happened off world. At least not for a fact. She had assumed earlier that the Jedi were being killed by clones, but she didn't know that for certain. If she got a communication out, they could save lives, potentially hundreds, or even thousands, of her Jedi brothers and sisters. She was not arrogant enough to believe she could save everyone, but even some would go a long way towards the Jedi's continued survival.

"You can help me save those not on this planet that we don't yet know the fate of?" she asked tentatively, and the hope that she had reached the right conclusion was easily betrayed by her voice.

A bright smile reached his face and he nodded. Harry said, "I hadn't thought of that specifically, but yes. But again, we need to be careful when doing this. We have to make people understand they cannot contact _you_ or Barriss, otherwise it could change time and destroy _us_."

He suddenly stood, and offered her a hand. "Are you willing to try?"

Aayla had no hesitation. She was being given an offer no Jedi would refuse. Should she allow her friends to die senseless deaths alone and uncomforted in the mud, or should she make a '_small difference'_?

'_That was an understatement of cosmic proportions_,' she thought.

She threw the covers off of her and took the offered hand with a smile and a nod. She stood up, her back sore and a very tight, but she ignored the pain. She was scared to look at how it might appear now if she had been shot seven times. But the fact she could move at all was miraculous. Normally Bacta treatment for a close-range direct blaster shot would have required days of healing, and even longer to survive several.

She saw him check the device attached to his wrist. "We have an hour and fifteen minutes before time syncs up to the point you were shot. We need to hurry."

Hurry they did. Within five minutes, she was dressed in her old pants, shoes, and head guard. The light shirt Harry had been dressed her in had somehow been transformed, and it now very closely resembled the torn and bloody one that lay abandoned on the ground.

While this happened, she watched Harry quickly dismantle two small cubes, which screamed power to her through the Force, and drained their energies away. He stored them in an expandable box that somehow was hidden on his forearm. Another wave of his hand and the bed she had rested in vanished.

At her inquisitive look, he said he would explain these abilities later. She was beginning to lose track of the things he said he would explain later. The numerous new concepts and objects that were casually shown to her had somewhat deadened her surprise and curiosity. She was focused upon helping her friends and would worry about the wonders of Harry's universe later.

"Oh, one last thing before we go," he said. He reached down to the box, and after he pressed a few markings, the box opened once again. The inside of the box did not match what she had seen inside it previously a few minutes ago when he stored the cubes. She barely got a glimpse though before he had extracted a small necklace with a large clear stone on it. The box itself was quickly closed, shrunk down, and flew to his arm where it suddenly vanished from sight.

"I'm lucky I still have one of these with me. This necklace will restrain your magical aura. This way, our past selves will not sense us. It's going to be extremely important that you wear this at all times until you learn how to suppress your aura yourself. I only sensed two other magically strong people on the planet in the past, so it's imperative I don't change things and suddenly and allow my past self to sense two more, understand?"

Aayla nodded and once again thought this skill to reign in her presence in the Force was definitely something she would need Harry to teach her. She placed the necklace around her neck and saw the stone change from clear to a vivid sapphire blue. She only felt slightly different though. Her senses deadened just somewhat, and a slight tingle passed over her.

"The necklace won't really affect you. It will just feel a bit odd. You should still have full access to all of your abilities, just please use them with restraint while we do this. We cannot be seen and we cannot be caught."

"I understand." she asked. Aayla realized her body probably now ran on pure adrenaline. She would need to keep going though, because the moment she truly stopped, the death of Barriss and the betrayal she experienced at the hands of her troops would return at full strength.

Harry nodded to her, and left to perform one last check of the cave. He wanted to make sure they had left nothing behind. After he verified there was nothing left, he walked up to her.

"Grab on to my arm with both hands and hold tight," he ordered while he closed his eyes.

She did so while she wondered what was about to happen. He was quiet, though she could definitely feel him suddenly flare in power with the Force for a few seconds before the feeling suddenly vanished. His emotions had settled into a state of sheer determination, as solid and unwavering as durasteel.

"Ok, I know where my magic is telling me to go. I wanted to try and appear somewhat close to where I think I saw those ships take-off earlier. But now I think my magic is directing me somewhere specific for this," he announced and suddenly looked at her.

He smirked, with a very mischievous look that made her very nervous, "This… will be a bit unpleasant. Hang on."

And with a mighty *Crack!*, they were gone.

-o0o0o-

Harry was definitely happy with how things had turned out. Aayla had agreed to work with him, and she seemed to understand the very subtle boundaries they had to work with while going into the past. He had next to no information on what was going on, and had no clue about the war he was suddenly involving himself in, but for some reason it felt right to help the blue Twi'lek female.

He had apparated them to a spot that his magic seemed to want him to go to. He had no idea what this spot would look like nine hours earlier, but he felt it was wise to trust this new found seer's instinct he seemed to have acquired.

Aayla had not been happy with the unannounced apparition, judging by the quick succession of punches his arm received. "I told you it would be unpleasant," with he told her with a bit of mirth.

"Remember that remark when I get you back," she said with a glare of her golden eyes.

"I look forward to your response, Knight Secura," he responded with mock-seriousness as he rubbed his arm.

Her glare merely intensified as she growled, "Call me _that_ again and you won't have to wait."

He merely nodded in acknowledgment. It was time to be serious. "Ok, I'm going to make us invisible so only we can see each other, silence our feet, and then put some repelling wards up so if we get too near someone they will instinctually think they have somewhere else important to be."

He saw Aayla stare at him as he cast each spell in what he knew was a very Hermione-like attempt to try to understand exactly what he had done. He knew she was magical, yet she had not performed any magic other than a very week form of Legilimency, which he had easily blocked. This observation troubled him greatly, but he realized he couldn't' dwell upon that now.

With the spells cast, they were ready. He looked at her half-invisible form that only he could see, and she looked back and nodded. Harry pulled out the time turner and extended its chain to encompass her head and neck as well as his.

"Well, wish us luck," said Harry as he released the safety latch on the time turner for the first time ever.

"May the Force be with us," replied Aayla evenly as she gripped Harry's arm tightly and took a deep breath.

Harry nodded and reached up and flipped the small hour glass that suspended from his hand between them three times. Suddenly, time began to reverse around them. He saw the twin moons move rapidly across the sky. Three ships suddenly landed, and troops and machinery suddenly expelled backwards from their innards and spread out, with the massive ships disappearing again almost as quickly as they appeared. The planet's sun suddenly rose into the air and brought a sudden brightness that made them squint their eyes.

Throughout the reverse-temporal trip, Aayla had gripped his arm tighter and tighter. Perhaps some part of her truly didn't believe she would be time traveling until that very moment. Or maybe it was the fact that she was now surrounded by her former comrades who very shortly would want her dead. Harry simply watched the bedlam around them while he waited for the blur to end.

Finally, the motion stopped and they stood invisible amidst what Harry could only refer to as ordered chaos. He had lived a military life for a while, and he could definitely appreciate and admire the controlled efficiency he saw as he realized they had appeared right smack in the middle of the trooper's base camp.

"Well, boss lady. It's your show. What do you want to do first?" Harry whispered as he took the time turner's chain off Aayla, clicked the safety on it, and tucked it away again. He didn't want to accidentally use the last grain of sand after all.

He could tell Aayla still hadn't quite recovered from the journey back in time. He could clearly see her knuckles growing a lighter shade of blue as she gripped her metal tube thing.

"Aayla? I know it hurts. I've seen betrayal too. Revenge is never as satisfying as you think it'll be beforehand, and all it does is make you lose a piece of yourself in the process. Please?" Harry all but pleaded the last few words to his companion. He needed her focused here on their goals, not getting payback against an enemy that probably outnumbered them ten thousand to one.

"You're right," Aayla said as she took a deep breath and clipped the tube back to her belt. She looked curiously at Harry, "You talk like a Jedi."

Rolling his eyes and smiling, Harry said, "Whatever, can we please go? We're losing time." He felt his lips quirk at the bad pun despite himself, and he was rewarded for breaking the somber mood with Aayla's own eyeroll.

"Let's go to the communications center first," she whispered as she set out in a specific direction.

"We'll need to clear the place out quietly and contact the Jedi Temple. It's the central place where all Jedi in the Galaxy are educated, train, and live when they're not on missions. They can spread the warning from there and we can make sure all the younglings get out. I'll make sure to remind them not to contact me or Bar… Barriss."

"Ok, sounds like a plan." He looked at his partner in crime and felt he needed to give voice to the respect he slowly felt grow for her. He had heard the slight crack in her voice as she spoke the last part of her plan, and knew that everything she felt was only just barely under the surface of her face. "You're doing well. You've got a good head on your shoulders. Just hold on for an hour or two more. Then we'll find a place to hide until these fools leave. Just take this one step at a time."

They slowly meandered their way through patrols and made it easily past security checkpoints on their way to the communications center. There were six clones on duty, and Harry had placed wards within seconds of their entrance that caused them to leave. Another muggle-repelling ward on the door would keep them from interruption for at least ten minutes, more than enough time for them to get the message out.

"Who will you contact?" asked Harry.

"Master Shaak Ti is at the Temple right now… at least she was during our status briefing this morning." Aayla said as she moved over to a console and began punching in codes. Harry watched her every move, though he had no clue what any of it meant, because he didn't know the system of writing yet in this universe. "She'll believe me if I tell her just enough. She also won't question me if I tell her to not contact me back."

The connection was established, and within a few moments, a light blue hologram of a woman with large ornamental horns and two appendages hanging from the side of her head down her chest appeared. She had darker skin around her face and bright white patches around her eyes. Aayla quickly blurted out to Harry, "Oh, Harry. Make me visible."

"Whoops," said Harry guiltily as he removed the charms from her.

"Master Ti, I bring grave news, and I beg you believe me despite how farfetched it sounds," said Aayla quickly, not waiting for Master Ti's acknowledgment of the greeting.

"What is wrong Aayla, I can easily sense your discomfort. I've never seen you this agitated before."

"Master Ti, it sounds unbelievable, but please believe me. I've travelled back in time nine standard hours. In less than fifty-five minutes, clone troopers will attempt to kill me on this world. They were ordered to do so, Master Ti. I believe the Jedi are about to be betrayed by the Chancellor. You must warn everyone. We need to evacuate the Temple and get the younglings to safety while we still have a chance."

"You can't be serious, Aayla. Time travel is a pipe dream, how can you be sure of all this?"

"I can't tell you the details right now. I've already been warned about trying to change too much. I'm not allowed to change anything I know will happen to avoid creating a paradox. Since I have no idea the fate of those back on Coruscant and on other worlds, I thought this would be possible to change and help Jedi… elsewhere," pleaded Aayla, her composure starting to slip.

Harry saw Shaak Ti's eyes widen. He knew that in that instant the woman had caught on to the fact that there was something on Aayla's planet that Aayla _couldn't_ change, and that it likely wasn't pleasant. Shaak Ti visibly braced herself and asked, "You say the Chancellor ordered this?"

"Yes, he's the only one who could've given an order that supersedes the Jedi within the chain of command. Earlier today I was on a status briefing as General Kenobi engaged General Grievous in battle. Master Windu stated he felt the Chancellor was surrounded by the Dark side. Master Yoda and Master Ki-Adi-Mundi both thought if Grievous was killed today and the Chancellor did not give up his emergency powers, he should be arrested," said Aayla without any hesitation.

"Hmm. Master Windu just left minutes ago with Masters Fisto," Harry heard an involuntary gasp as this name was mentioned and a flare of emotion, "…Kolar, and Tiinto to arrest the Chancellor. They came to the conclusion after a discussion with young Skywalker that Palpatine is really the Darth Sidious persona we've been chasing for years."

Harry, still invisible, whispered to Aayla, "If they failed to arrest him, that's what likely kicked this whole shit storm off." She nodded in agreement with him.

"They probably fail Master Ti. And that's what started this chain of events against the Jedi. If the Chancellor defeated them, he would likely use the arrest attempt as an excuse to brand all Jedi as traitors. Master Windu said he felt a plot to destroy the Jedi while on the conference call. I have seen the result of it, and it's only through the most miraculous intervention I've ever heard of in the Force that I lived through it," said Aayla.

Shaak Ti stared at Aayla for a few long moments, and then finally nodded. "The Force is clearing. The shroud that has blurred our vision for so many decades begins to dissipate. My sight now suddenly feels clearer than it has since I was a Padawan… and it tells me to trust what you are saying. I will issue orders now. The younglings will be evacuated using a method long guarded but never spoken aloud of for fear of times such as these. If anything else, they at least will survive."

"Thank you Shaak Ti," Aayla blurted out, the honorific owed to the Jedi Master forgotten in her excitement, which earned here merely a small smirk from the holographic woman.

"I will try and contact as many individual Jedi as possible who are stationed at the front lines. I doubt I will be able to reach many though. Those I do will all be surrounded by their would-be executioners."

Aayla quickly said, "Please remember not to contact any of us here on Felucia. My original self is on the front-lines now unaware of all of this happening. I've been assured terrible things will happen to me if known events in the time line change because of the manner I've travelled back."

Shaak Ti closed her eyes and nodded in understanding, "You have a way off world?"

"We're about to go and attempt to secure it now."

"Understood. Take care of yourself, Aayla. May the Force be with you… and whoever else is there," said Shaak Ti with a forced smile.

"May it be with us all Master Ti. Please stay safe," and that, Aayla cut the transmission.

"How long, Harry?" asked Aayla, as she followed their quickly devised plan and used her access codes to delete the transmission log and order the backups destroyed immediately.

"Minute fifty-five. You were five seconds under what you said you could safely do." Apparently the comm. systems had different logging systems for communications longer than two minutes. They didn't want the transmission they just made going through that extra bit of scrutiny.

Harry walked over and put a hand on her shoulder with a smile. "You did great. Even this small difference will save lives that likely didn't have a chance before"

She turned her golden eyes towards Harry, and he could see the sadness there. He saw the flicker of comprehension, that she knew what he was trying to do, yet it visibly took all her strength to fight the buried grief just behind her eyes.

"Thank you Harry, the Jedi Order may owe its very survival to you because of your actions today."

"We're not done yet, we still need to ensure _our_ survival. Come on Boss Lady, let's go steal some stuff," said Harry cheekily as he disillusioned Aayla once more.

He watched her shake her head in a bit of muted amusement and leave the room first, which allowed Harry to remove the Muggle-Repelling charms he had placed within the room and on the door as he left.

They proceeded first to the Mess Hall and through the attached kitchens to the storage area beyond. Most of the food was raw ingredients, and they both doubted they would have a need for drums of dried powder that weighed just as much as each of them did.

They did find a stockpile of field rations stored within stacked pallets. Each stack of palettes was easily five meters tall, yet, when Harry was done placing shrinking charms on all but one stack, they were only five inches tall. Feather-light charms applied to each had them placed within the trunk by the handful. A few overpowered Gemino charms had the stacks duplicated from the one remaining tower of palettes and moved to where they were previously standing. It would be at least twelve hours before the fake palettes vanished, and the ships would be long gone from the planet before that occurred.

As they left the makeshift warehouse, Harry realized that once upon a time he _did_ cook for his relatives. He actually got quite good at it since a failed dish usually earned him a beating from his Uncle Vernon. He figured he would maybe try to reacquire that skill and cook for Aayla, so he quickly shrunk down one of each kind of container and stored them within a trunk as well.

Their next stop was the barrack's sickbay where they repeated the procedure. Crate upon crate of medical supplies were shrunk down, stored, and then replaced with empty facsimiles. Aayla said that some of these medicines were incompatible with both humans and Twi'leks, but it would be good to have around in case they eventually joined up with other Jedi who would need one of these medicines.

Their last stop within the barracks was the quarters of Aayla and her fellow Jedi Knight Barriss Offee. Harry stopped her from opening the door right away with her key card when they reached it.

"We can't use your key card to open it if you're supposed to be killed soon somewhere else," said Harry as he closed his eyes and began gathering magic to him.

"Then what are we supposed to do?" said Aayla with a bit of annoyance.

Harry was silent for a moment with his eyes closed, then his eyes snapped open and he said, "This."

He thrust his arms out and did a mass '_Alohomora'_ that hit every electronic sensor in the hallway. Harry had often used this spell to wake his troops up for impromptu drills early in the morning. He figured that if they worked on electronic locks in his world, there was a good chance they would work here too. The trick was to send your magic along the electronic pathways but not overload them.

Simultaneously, forty separate door locks on this particular floor opened and Harry quickly dragged Aayla inside while she gawked at scene.

"How did you do that?" asked Aayla breathlessly as she looked up and down the hallway.

"Ask me that and any other question you want later, not now," admonished Harry as he quickly pulled out a trunk and hid it from site from the still open door by placing it behind a desk on the wall.

Harry then watched as Aayla slowly grabbed her clothes one piece at a time. As she did this, he quickly made a copy of each piece and placed it back in the drawer. She was diligently emptying the contents of the room, but eventually Harry got a bit frustrated with the time it the whole process took.

He quickly ran to door to double-check no one was in the hallway, turned around and said, "Acio Aayla's Stuff," while he dragged his wand in a circle and then pointed it to the floor. While all of Aayla belongings began flew from their drawers and the closet, Harry opened up his trunk to one of his empty compartments.

When everything in the room settled on the ground, Harry pointed his wand at the pile and dragged its aim to the trunk and said, "Pack." All of Aayla's belongings folded and arranged themselves neatly in midair before they came to rest lightly in the trunk. He would always be thankful for Andromeda Tonks teaching him how to perform that spell after the second rise of Voldemort ended.

Harry looked at Aayla with a smile, and was greeted by a look of absolute incredulity over what had just happened, "Magic," said Harry as he waved his arms in the air comically and leaned against a wall.

Aayla looked back at the room again after she shook herself from her disbelief. Then looked at the other closet.

"The rest all belonged to Barriss."

"Will you take any of it to remember her by?" asked Harry after a few moments of silence.

"Jedi do not form attachments, so there is no need for something physical to remember her," said Aayla in a monotone voice. Harry lifted an eyebrow at the forced and automated way she made the statement, but did not inquire further.

"Well, do you feel any of her belongings would be useful for us to take while we are here," asked Harry tentatively.

He watched her eyes flash at the thought of stealing from her friend. "I will not steal from her."

Harry shook his head at the statement and walked over to her. He gently placed a hand on her shoulder. "Only someone who is attached would say something like that. You aren't a machine Aayla. It's okay to feel what you're feeling. We'll deal with our grief as soon as we've left here, but right now I need your head in the game. Is there anything you would like to take to remember your friend or you feel would be useful to us?"

Aayla hesitated for a few moments, and walked over to a drawer by Barriss' bunk. She withdrew a few crystals from the drawer, along with a spare lightsaber.

"These were lost Jedi healing crystals that Barriss managed to recover. Barriss spent many months researching their history and underwent many trials to recover them. Since you healed me earlier, maybe you can put them to good use as well. Plus you'll eventually need a lightsaber of your own I think. That is… if I'm going to train you to be a Jedi," said Aayla with a tentative half smile.

"Not if I teach you to be a witch first," said Harry with a grin.

With another flourish of the wand, Harry created copies of Barriss' items before they flew from Aayla's hand and into the trunk. Another caused the trunk close, shrink and then fly into Harry's forearm where it vanished.

"Come on, what's next?" asked Harry.

"We need transportation off-world." She paused for a few moments, as if she truly realized the first time the scope of what they faced. "Your idea was to stowaway aboard one of the Star Destroyers? I think it would be better to steal a ship or two, retrofit them after the Star Destroyers leave, and fly out of here on our own in a week or so."

Harry paused and thought it over a few seconds, and could not find any fault with the idea. "Sounds good. If you can lead me to the ships you want, I can place wards over them to make them appear to be trees or hills that everyone else will simply walk by."

"If you're really confident you can hide some ships, we should hide three or four. You can help me pull parts from them after the clones leave and we can make one combined ship out of them all."

At his questioning look, she elaborated, "This way, no one will recognize their engine signatures or configuration as being Republic military hardware. Normal ship and space station scanners can determine not only what model ship you have, but the level of threat your ship poses from certain characteristics."

After she received his nod of acknowledgement, she continued, "We should hide Barriss' and my star fighters as well. There are a few Jedi installations and outposts detailed within hidden files onboard them we could access for sanctuary, if only temporarily. Depending upon how badly the Chancellor's betrayal goes, some of those outposts may not be options. Each Jedi is only granted access to a few of the hidden bases, so that if one of us is captured, the entire network of safe houses is not compromised."

They proceeded outside and walked to an airfield. Harry couldn't believe how many ships there were. He felt more and more that it should be easy to identify a few out of the way ships that he could suddenly help to disappear. Militaries throughout Earth history lost and misplaced equipment all the time. Harry doubted the clones would search very hard for equipment if they were in a rush to leave this planet after their Jedi were killed.

They first came upon a fleet of three dozen "Larty's" as Aayla called them. They were a combination troop transport and gunship that had the capability to leave the atmosphere to ferry troops and equipment. Rare versions of the craft could apparently even enter hyperspace, which Aayla mentioned was how ships travelled from one system to another.

Harry and Aayla picked two about half a mile apart from each other that were slightly closer to the forest then the rest of the grounded fleet. Harry threw some semi-permanent Muggle-Repelling wards around each, and then put up wards to place a hardened dome over each ship. Harry than slowly transfigured the ground to encompass each ship, making it look like the combination of flower trees and rugged landscape had stood there for eternity.

"Wow," was all Aayla said as she watched Harry work. After she finally managed to find her voice after some silence, she walked up and kissed him on the cheek and said with a wide smile, "I honestly had doubts you could hide ships until right now Harry. You're a gift from the Force itself. This gives us so much of a better chance of surviving to get off this planet now, and it's all because of you."

After Harry turned away to hide the absolute Weasley-red blush that had just marred his face, he said "Well, we're still not done. Let's find your personal ships, move them a bit, and then hide them. I can see them wanting to destroy your ships as well if they belonged to you."

She nodded her agreement to him, "It's this way."

While Harry and Aayla walked from the airfield to find her ship, Harry stumbled, stopped walking, and suddenly clutched at his chest. The reverberation of betrayal in the planet's magic made Harry's heart feel like it had been ripped out of his chest. He did not even have his magical senses extended and he still felt the death echo of Aayla's friend Barriss.

Aayla was immediately beside him and offered an arm, looking none the better herself as she had obviously felt the disturbance as well, "By the Whill's grace, what was that? Are you hurt?"

"No… Not hurt… That felt even more horrible than last time," Harry wheezed.

"What, what's horrib-…. Oh no. Please no." asked Aayla, her eyes pleaded for Harry to not confirm what she immediately suspected was behind the surge in magic she felt.

Harry simply looked into her eyes and shook his head. Aayla fell to her knees with her face in her hands. Harry wanted to comfort her right this moment, but they were currently exposed where they were. Aayla had repeatedly reminded him to be mindful of the obscenely violent wildlife that frequented the beautiful landscape here, and he did not want her to become the snack of whatever these 'Ackleys' were.

Picking Aayla up in his arms bridal-style, he continued to walk in the direction she had told him her fighter lay hidden alongside Barriss'. He felt the subtle nudges magic gave him when he relaxed his mind and opened up. It very quickly led them to two single-person ships. One was painted red in a very standardized manner, while the other was a light blue similar to Aayla's skin.

He placed the still quietly crying Aayla on the ground, Harry decided it would simply have to be enough to hide the ships without relocation. Aayla had just about reached her limit with today's events, and needed time so she could deal with the emotions that finally overcame her senses. Harry knew she was strong-willed, but Harry doubted he himself would be able to endure what she had undergone today without eventually turning into a basket case. Heck, he was not sure he handled his own experiences of the day all that well.

Five minutes of ward application later, there was no indication two Jedi Starfighters were ever present at their location.

He walked over to where Aayla sat with her knees curled up into her chest and sat down quietly next to her. His rested an arm lightly around the shoulders of the now weary Twi'lek. "Are you ok to keep going a bit further, or do you need to sit here for a bit longer? I think we can spare a few more minutes," he said quietly.

She swallowed hard, nodded, and said, "I'm ready. We shouldn't stay so close to these ships anyways. It just was too much to bear for a bit there."

"I know. All of the echoes of death. They're still going. It's almost beyond me to filter it all out."

She nodded and closed her eyes, and Harry could barely hear her whisper, "I'm such a failure. I can't hold back my emotions like any decent padawan over the age of fifteen can. Barriss should be alive right now instead of me. She's a far better Jedi than me with how I've reacted today."

Harry removed his arm from her shoulders and turned her to look at him. "Enough with the pity party, Aayla. Survivor's guilt helps no one. You're going through what anyone who's ever experienced absolute insanity like this goes through."

Speaking a bit more quietly, he continued, "It happens to every single one of us who has to stand by and watch our friends die. Its natural and it takes time to deal with. And you just did recover. You needed ten minutes and look, you're almost ready to go again. You're not 100% yet and you won't be for a long time, but you're good enough to do the job that needs doing before we both find a place of safety."

He tried to make a bit of a joke. Anything to make her smile and get the courage to push just a bit further, "You know… so we can both go and completely fall apart together."

Harry could tell she was still held back by her despair and the feeling that somehow she wasn't supposed to be feeling like she did. It would take more than a few jokes to get through to her. "Look, anyone who says that you shouldn't be feeling emotions at times like this probably never left their nice comfortable library or their meditation mat. Real people feel emotions. Real people have to then deal with those emotions. If you ignore them, all they do is build up inside you, until one day they just explode. And on those days, it's a crap shoot whether you do or say something you'll regret the rest of your life."

"You've done an amazing job under the circumstances today, Aayla. Nine hours ago, you were a hair's breadth away from Death itself. And now look at you. You helped give the next generation of your Order a fighting chance to live on. Without you, they would've received no warning whatsoever. And you can bet, if these clones are shooting their Generals like you in the back out here in the field, they would've had no reservations about slaughtering four-year-old kids in your Temple."

Seeing he needed to say a bit more to her, he decided honesty was the best policy. "And you've helped me. I wouldn't have any clue how to get off this planet or where to go. My best bet would have been to sneak onto one of those massive ships and hope and pray my charms and wards didn't fail me while I hid. And then what? I don't know anyone in this universe other than you."

"You really sound like a Jedi, you know that," said Aayla with a sad smile.

"I'm a Wizard, Knight Secura," he said with a jokingly quirked eyebrow. Harry reached down and grabbed her hand softly, "I honestly don't think I could've found a better person to rely upon than you. There was one time you were truly under pressure today when you talked to that Shaak Ti lady, and you held firm. You did your job and got the objective done quickly and effectively."

Harry picked up the still silent woman and stood her up on her two legs. She didn't resist at all. "Come on, just a bit more. Let me memorize the way this clearing looks so I can apparate the two of us directly here rather than walk."

A slow spin allowed him to take in every detail he could of the surrounding area. Harry walked back over to Aayla, who now stared off into the distant sky, where three shapes were clearly seen despite the bright daytime light.

"It's sad. They will leave here and go on to wreak havoc in the name of the Chancellor now. Everything we've fought, bled, and died for was for nothing in the end," Aayla spoke quietly to herself.

Harry turned to her as she continued to speak, "While I would like nothing more to put a few rather large bombs on timers so we could safely blow them all to hell from a safe distance, it's still dangerous. Especially with an explosion that big. It's possible they could tie the explosion back to us since they'd know it was likely Jedi sabotage that did it."

"We should wait for opportunities to present themselves, and be proactive when we can control the outcome. Our information right now is incomplete. We have no idea where these guys are going next."

"We can do a bit of sabotage I think," Aayla pondered aloud after a few moments of silence. "They won't hang out in orbit for longer than an hour or two if they're moving out as fast as you say they were. Probably within an hour or two of when we went back in time, they'll enter hyperspace to travel to another system. Standard Operating Procedures. Clones aren't really capable of disobeying orders or procedures," she said with a mirthless laugh.

"We'll see what we can do then," said Harry simply.

They walked back to the airfield, invisibility and muggle-repelling spells still in effect. While they passed through, Harry noticed some robots as they wandered aimlessly through the area. Some of them appeared to be busy with tasks, which looked to be maintenance related.

"Aayla? What about those machines that are working on the ships? Do we need any of them?" asked Harry.

She stopped and looked at a few of the robots that were going about their business around them. Slowly she started nodding. "Yes, it would be quite useful to have some droids around. We'll need at least two astromech droids and one protocol droid."

Harry blinked and then chuckled. "Ok, I have no idea what any of that means. Can you point them out to me?"

After a barely noticed roll of her eyes, Aayla dragged Harry over to a maintenance bay, where they found three squat droids that resembled garbage cans plugged into a wall. "These are astromech droids. They're general purpose laborers, plus they help provide in-flight maintenance and quick system overrides in star fighters."

"How about we take all three? And what about this rack they're plugged into. I assume that's for power? Should we take that as well?"

"If you can get it, great. It would be better to have that than having cables lying around in order to charge them." Harry waved his hand and all three astomechs floated up into the air. All three immediately activated, though Aayla walked up to each, flipped a panel up and did something inside. Each droid immediately shut down.

With his wand, Harry pulled the charging rack away from the wall after using a few well placed cutting curses. Unfortunately, it had been welded into place, so a portion of the wall behind came with it. A quick transfiguration spell extended the wall around the hole so there was no evidence the rack had ever been there.

Floating the droids back into the rack, Harry plugged them all back in. Seeing a loose cable on a table, Harry wrapped the three droids with it.

"Here's another thing I can do. I can teleport myself directly, or I can make things teleport on their own and anything attached to them. This is called a portkey." A wave of his wand and a muttered Portus caused the cable to glow a soft blue. A few seconds later, the entire rack disappeared.

"Where did they go?" asked Aayla, clearly at a loss how all this was accomplished and simply attempted to go with the flow now.

I sent them next to that first Larty we hid, inside of its wards. We can pick them up when we pull down the wards around that particular one in a few days.

"It's going to take me years to learn all these things, isn't it?" asked Aayla, with a voice that sounded half dejected and half determined.

"Probably, and I fully intend to make sure you live to see all those years," said Harry. "What's next?"

"Protocol Droid. They're standardized translators that help with customs of any planets we may visit. We'll likely find some running around the command center adjacent to the Barracks

It took only five minutes to track one down. A silver humanoid shaped droid with a kind female voice found herself suddenly deactivated and portkeyed to the second Larty.

"I think the only significant place we haven't visited is the armory," Aayla finally said.

"Well, let's get some things to blow stuff up with and call it a successful mission," said Harry. He wanted to see what kind of technology they had up close. The bits he had seen had been so far in advance of what they had back on Earth they weren't even capable of being compared directly.

The security around the armory was quite impressive. Multiple checkpoints and scans prevented any sort of casual wanderings. Of course they weren't designed with Harry's ability to line-of-sight apparate right through the barriers. The noise of the place was more than enough to cover any sound the teleportation created.

The armory itself offered them many possibilities to acquire additional supplies. They quickly grabbed various weapons, armor, and specialized sensor equipment. Aayla was extremely reluctant to take any of the blasters for herself, since Jedi looked down upon them and her undercover work had always stressed hand to hand combat. Harry countered all her arguments deftly, saying she couldn't be using her "Force" abilities in hand to hand combat overtly anymore without giving away she was a Jedi. Instead, they picked up multiple sniper rifles, along without as much ammunition and blaster packs they could quickly grab.

As they were leaving, Aayla grew still and quiet. They watched as a large contingent of troopers passed by as they arrived back from battle. The column was supported by a large four legged transport vehicle that Aayla had referred to earlier as an AT-TE.

One that looked surprisingly like the one Harry assumed had made the crater that had killed Barriss earlier.

"That is Lieutenant Galle's squad. They're the clones who killed Barriss," said Aayla without any emotion in her voice.

Harry moved behind her wrapped his arms around her waist. He was a little taller than her, and he must admit that it was nice to stand behind a female and not get her hair in his eyes or nose.

"They used that AT-TE to kill her. I don't think anything else on that battlefield could make a crater as big as I saw out there," said Harry.

A slow smile gripped Harry's face. "Aayla?"

"Yes?" she answered with a voice as hard as steel.

"That big gun on top of the AT-TE, is it something that would work well on a ship?"

Her presence lost all fire that had been burned inside it. She took a calculated look at the gun and mused aloud, "Yes it would be, but you would never be able to fit the mass driver launch assembly, the ordnance it requires, and its power supply on a ship and simultaneously hide them from sensors."

"Let me take care of that part of things. I already have some ideas on how I can actually contribute to this starship, since I don't know squat about the technology and how to modify it. Let's go pull one, hide it, and then find enough rounds to last us a good while for it."

It amazed Harry how easy it was to steal a massive gun the size of half a house. A few cutting curses loosened the gun and four linked portkeys had it portkeyed to Aayla's starfighter. A few minutes of work after apparating there had it successfully hidden under the fighter's wards.

Afterwards, he returned and did the same for the power supply and all ordnance in the area. He easily managed to fit the hundreds of shrunken rounds within another space of his thirteen compartment trunk. All of the stolen hardware was replaced with duplicates that would evaporate into thin air later on.

After they secured the power supply near the second Larty, they made one more trip to the armory. Upon arrival, Aayla quietly led him into a far corner where they found a mass of cylinders and boxes. He watched as she stared at the pile for a minute, while she fought some internal battle within her mind. Eventually she asked, "Is there a way you can get people to not think specific lights or symbols are on and active with these?"

"Yeah I can place glamours upon them so the mimic something other than their actual appearance." Aayla quickly began pressing buttons on almost every cylinder present. Then she reached into the boxes and pressed a few buttons within each as well.

Turning back to Harry, she said "I need you to change these cylinders so these specific lights are not on. I'm hoping people just ignore the boxes and don't look inside them. Smirking, Harry quickly placed glamours upon each cylinder. Then he cast a compulsion charm on each box so that people wouldn't look inside.

"Done, are they all going to the same place, or will they be split up?" asked Harry.

"They should go mainly to one specific ship, with a few diverted to the other ships. Normally one ship is tasked to primarily carry munitions, but they will spread extra resources around to the other ships to ensure that losing one ship will not completely cripple a battlegroup until a resupply ship is deployed," said Aayla quickly.

"Do I want to know the payload of these?" asked Harry tentatively.

"They go boom, and will do so right next to many other things that go boom," said Aayla with a smirk before she walked away. Harry wisely figured it was best not to question her about the size of said 'boom'.

-o0o0o-

They had returned to the edge of the airfield and both sat on the ground in silence, lost in their own thoughts. Both knew they were done. They had accomplished every single objective they had so quickly set out to perform. All that was left now was to find a place to hide and lay low for a few days until it was absolutely assured the clones had left the planet for good and wouldn't return.

It was nearly an hour past the death echo of Barriss, and it took quite a bit of Harry's concentration to block out the continuing echo's of the distant deaths of Jedi that could still be felt happening somewhere else out in the galaxy. The idea that someone light-years away could die in a manner so horrifying that their death was felt instantaneously across a galaxy was very sobering to him. He could only imagine how Aayla felt at the moment, and whether she was taking the brunt full blast or had deadened her senses to the touch of Death that screamed to his own magical senses.

The sun slowly set upon one of the longest days of Harry Potter's life. It was likely a beautiful thing to watch, but Harry hadn't even glanced at it. He had awoken this morning, nervous and half-hopeful. The end of the war they fought for a decade well within their grasp. Now, he was a universe away, with only one companion who he did not know at all. An alien that was currently hunted like a traitor by a corrupt government that spanned a galaxy.

Harry placed his head down and curled his knees up into his chest in a manner he was only vaguely aware mimicked Aayla's own breakdown a short time earlier. He knew he was at his limit, and there wasn't a thing he could do about it. Everything and everyone he knew may as well be dead.

Aayla hadn't recognized _any_ of his abilities, and had never heard of portals. The look of confusion she gave when she admitted she had never seen someone conjure a glass of water had been like a punch to the gut. He knew with absolute certainty from the moment he mentioned portals and got a questioning look back there was no going home for him.

Ever.

Involuntarily, Harry rocked back and forth while he sat, no longer fighting the panic that had slowly threatened to overwhelm him. He was now absolutely alone.

He was startled when he felt Aayla straddle him from behind and wrap her arms around him. Her forehead rested against the back of his neck as she squeezed his chest for all she was worth. After a few moments, she rested her chin on shoulder and spoke quietly. "We'll endure this, Harry. I'm an Empath, I can feel what you're feeling when I'm touching you. You're not alone. You've kept me from falling apart all day, you think I wouldn't do the same for you? The Force sometimes… very rarely, performs spontaneous miracles. They're rare… legendary in fact. Millennia pass between people witnessing them. After what you've done today, you are _my_ miracle."

Harry felt her pull on his forearms so he would release his own grip upon his knees. She guided his arms to his chest and then held on to his hands while she hugged him from behind. After a few brief minutes of respite and quiet, she said, "We should get going. Find a place to hide and rest. Maybe get some food."

She then shook with what Harry could only describe as silent giggles, "Frak, I have to relieve myself. I've been holding it for the last hour."

Harry snorted in amusement. Which he figured was her intent all along. He looked over his shoulder at the woman staring at him inches away from his own eyes. He found nothing but concern in those eyes. "Thanks for that, it all just finally hit me right then."

"What are friends for?" she said, and Harry could hear the smile in her voice. After he gave her hands one more squeeze with his own, Harry stood and dusted his robes off. '_Friends? I think I can live with that."_

He offered his hand to pull Aayla up and said, "Let's move then, any suggestions on where you want to hide? Or I should I trust these instincts that seem to speak to me now when I open up my mind?"

Harry saw her eyes widen at this statement as she took his hand again, almost to brace herself up, "Those aren't instincts. It is the Force guiding you. We Jedi train for years to get to the point where if you open yourself up, you can be guided in your decisions."

"The easiest method is to use the Force to help you predict how to move in a fight. When to dodge, parry, or jump. The hard part is using it to see eventualities… possible futures, or to just get guidance on a decision. I've only recently been able to get those specific aspects of things to work well, and even then only barely. My training has always been much more focused upon combat and stealth. I'm nowhere near what someone like Master Ti or Grand Master Yoda could accomplish when they ponder long-term eventualities and possibilities."

Harry tried to digest this. True seers were quite rare on Earth. And more often than not they were frauds. It seemed here almost all magicals were seers in some small manner.

"So trust my instincts, eh?" She nodded. "Okay."

Harry cleared his mind and extended his magical senses outwards. He needed somewhere safe to hide with Aayla where they could rest for a day or two. He felt a subtle mental suggestion, a guide that wasn't really there. He allowed it to shift his mind's eye as he stretched out and…

'_There_.'

He opened his eyes and smiled at Aayla, who still held his hand. "Found a place…3…2…1..."

And with one final "Crack!" they were gone.


	4. Friendship and Hiding

**Summary**:

Harry Potter / Star Wars-over. While leading the final charge against a retreating Dark Lord, Harry is thrown through a Demon Portal, landing on a strange world in a galaxy far away.

**Disclaimer**

I don't own Harry Potter in any way. JKR has those rights... Also, Star Wars is owned by Lucasfilm/George Lucas, etc etc.

***Author's Note ***

Inspirations: Sword and Magic by bluminous8

Chapter First Published: 2013-03-31

Chapter Last Update:

**Chapter 4 – Friendship and Hiding**

The exhausted duo appeared in a large clearing, surrounded on one side by massive spiked plants that towered into the sky, and on the other by the forest of tree flowers.

"Those are Mature Spore Plants," Aayla tiredly said as she nodded towards the massive spiked monstrosities. "If you touch them, they attack. They've wiped out whole armored divisions of clone troopers when one clone was careless enough to brush against one."

"Perfect," said Harry while he looked them over. "We can set up a temporary camp for a few hours here underneath some of the larger ones that extend over the forest. We won't be visible from the sky and no one in their right mind will go near them."

"Harry, they aren't safe to be around," she persisted. She personally didn't want to be anywhere by these things. She had seen the damage they can inflict first-hand and had no desire to witness such carnage again.

"Don't worry, it's not like we'll be close enough to touch them," said a very satisfied wizard as they walked underneath a large spore plant branch that extended above them by at least ten meters.

"We have two options. We can build ourselves a small shelter. We'll end up exposed to the elements, but if we have to leave quickly it'll buy us a bit more time. The other option is to use a Wizard's Tent. It looks like a small cloth structure on the outside, but there is a full-fledged apartment on the inside. Drawback is that it takes a few minutes for me to set up and tear down. And whatever option we choose, I can place a charmed wall around the shelter in case the plant attacks."

Aayla could see the benefits of both. She really wanted to shower and sleep in a genuine bed. The barracks bunks were just as uncomfortable as the beds in the Jedi Temple. Undercover work was always a favorite of hers because they were one of the few times she could sleep in beds the rest of society found normal. However, she saw how a low-key presence would be undermined by the utilization of things not native to the planet.

Harry spoke up and interrupted her thoughts, which only made her choice easier when he said, "Let's just build a temporary shelter for now. I'll get some wards thrown up, and then I'll put the tent up long enough for you to do… whatever it is you need to do." Harry waved his hands wildly around and gestured towards her lower body while he looked away. She found his embarrassment at her need to utilize the fresher quite endearing.

"I'll stay on watch while you're in there. Then we'll tear down the tent until we can get back to the cave. I think staying there will be a good place to wait things out a few days."

"Ok, sounds like a plan," agreed Aayla wholeheartedly.

A very quick and dirty shelter was built with leaves and pieces of a downed flower tree. Harry had the temporary ward stones set and keyed to Aayla and himself within minutes, followed by the tent construction right next to their temporary home.

However, when Harry finally pitched the tent, Aayla could not help but feel like she was about to be set up as the victim of some sort of prank. All Harry would say was, "Have fun," before he turned to add what he said were additional protections to the small enclosed bubble of the Force he said would prevent anything of hostile intent from approaching them.

She turned to the entrance to this tent. It was rather primitive, made of some type of synthetic cloth. Most outdoor temporary structures she was familiar with were expandable and made of a very light version of plasteel. They were quite durable, yet flexible and light. She was far too tired to avoid a joke at her expense at the moment, so she simply walked inside to get this over with.

She felt her mouth fall open as she stepped through the threshold. She could feel the Force tingle upon her as she passed the entrance and '_shifted_' somewhere. That was the best way she could describe the curious feeling she felt when she walked inside. Her Force Perception abilities could sense nothing outside of wherever she was now, which included Harry. And then she finally looked around at where she was.

It was a small one bedroom apartment with kitchen, fresher, and sitting room. Simplicity was the word, and it had a quiet coziness to it. She wondered if this is what a typical home was like on Harry's world.

In the end, she decided to delay any further thoughts she devoted to the tent until after she visited the fresher. When she entered the room, she found it was as simple as the rest of the apartment. She was amused by the very flowery soaps that came out of the dispenser on a wall, and some other odd liquids in containers in the shower. The one luxury in the place seemed to be a very large soaking tub which could probably seat four quite comfortably.

Even though she sorely wanted to soak in hot water for a good hour or so, a shower was all she needed at the moment until they relocated later that night. The idea of Harry alone on watch was another matter that pressed urgently upon her mind. He had done everything today except convince Shaak Ti to listen to her, and even then the opportunity to do so wouldn't have occurred without his help. He had supposedly fought a major battle to end a war which he still hadn't fully explained, had his whole life taken from him, killed twelve ARC's, saved and healed her, and then took her back in time and possibly saved a good number of her fellow members of the Jedi Order. And now, while she was inside a tent in a fresher, he stayed outside to build protections in the Force she had never heard of before.

Forget what the Jedi Order may owe him for being able to get word out before the mutiny hit. She personally owed Harry Potter her life. If she had to take a five-minute shower now to prevent him from falling asleep from exhaustion, she would do so to make sure the courageous man out there didn't succumb to fatigue while alone.

As she slipped out of her clothes, she caught a glimpse of something over her shoulder in the reflected profile from the mirror. She turned around and gasped as she saw, for the first time, the scars from her healed injuries.

There they were. Seven circular blotches of shiny whitish-blue scar tissue stood out prominently against the normally dull blue of her back. She had felt them as she had moved around today, but this was the first time she was completely aware of the extent of her injuries.

She realized immediately there would've been no way for her to survive if not for Harry. From what Harry said, only seven of the twelve clones had managed to fire. She doubted each would have fired once, so she would have easily received over twenty to thirty blaster shots in the back. In all honesty, a normal sentient being would be lucky to survive three or more direct blaster impacts at close range. With Harry's help, she had lived through an unprecedented seven.

The true surprise was the state of the scarred tissue. There was far less damage than the results of a Bacta submersion would have provided if she had she been healed in that manner. The next amazing thing she became consciously aware of was that her muscles seemed just fine. There was the odd twitch in them, like something wasn't quite healed right. However, she experienced nowhere near the muscle loss and control issues that would normally be associated with the extreme Bacta treatment regimen needed for close range blaster fire.

She sighed as she turned to look at her bare front and then turned again to look at her back. She was not normally a vane creature, but she was well aware of how men viewed her. She had an amazing chest, toned abs, a great looking ass that extended down to very full legs. The number of times she had been hit on by random strangers was far too innumerable to count. The same could be said as to the number of times while on undercover assignments she was subjected to sleazy criminals that attempted to claim her as a slave since she was a free Twi'lek female. Her lightsaber, hand to hand fighting abilities, and subtle Force manipulations often discouraged the continuation of such thoughts, but these scars might discourage them as well.

The Jedi beliefs she had sworn as a child to uphold would say that physical disabilities or scarring were not burdens to feel concern. Physical beauty was only for the attraction of a mate, and a taboo upon relationships existed under the Jedi Code.

However, as a woman, she could not help but think this attack inflicted some deeper psychological damage upon her. She was grateful to be alive, but she felt as if this had affected her in some other manner that had not yet fully registered. She tried to justify the train of thought when she told herself she merely had examined how this might hinder her attractiveness in undercover situations. After all, her looks were a valuable resource against criminals to gain information. But, she somehow knew she felt the impact of her injuries in a much more personal manner.

As Aayla banished these negative thoughts and slipped into the shower, she was surprised when it offered hot water. The Jedi, for some odd reason, had long made all occupants of the Temple take cold showers. It had ingrained the notion that hot showers were a luxury just slightly behind a hot bath.

Her shower finished after ten minutes, and afterwards she redressed and joined Harry back outside. The moment she stepped outside of the tent, the feel of the Force in the air felt as if it had slapped her in the face. She barely registered the change in humidity from the cool air conditioning inside the tent to the stifling heat outside.

Harry still had not finished the completion of the protections for the area. Sweat dripped down his face as he used his wand to carve symbols and lines into a large flat piece of stone that was not present when she had gone into the tent.

She watched as he continued on for another ten minutes before he finally finished. The intricate writings bordered upon artwork to her eyes. With his task completed, he finally acknowledged her presence when he beckoned her over. He conjured a small knife from nowhere in his hand with a sudden flash of the Force.

"I need a few drops of your blood to key yourself to a few of the protections. Just stand over here. I'll cut your palm with this and heal it right afterwards." He gestured and pointed at two specific symbols on the block. "You'll need to place blood here and here."

Aayla nodded, curious to see not only him heal her palm, but how this blood would be used. There was a quick flash of pain as the knife sliced open her palm, but an instant later, the heat was suddenly gone. She opened her now bloodied hand, to find there was now no wound there. After the momentary shock passed, she dripped some of the pooled blood from her palm upon the two symbols Harry pointed out. He followed suit with his own hand and did the same before she felt him fire a quick burst of the Force into the stone. She immediately shivered due to the aftereffects of so much living Force suddenly concentrated in the air.

"Those are wards," said Harry simply as he pointed to the air around them. "If anyone means either of us ill-intent and crosses within the outer boundaries of the wards, they'll feel a strong urge to leave. If they force the issue, and proceed further in, they'll experience pain like they've never experienced before in their lives. If they make it even further in after that… well..." He shrugged as he said the last, the implications quite clear as to the fatal consequences of such actions.

Aayla had no clue how to respond to that. It seemed an over-the-top level of security to put up, but then again, it was wise to overestimate those who mean you harm. She had never heard of the Force used in such a violent preventative manner. But in the end, it was a defensive mechanism. It warned and diverted people away first before it went on the offensive.

'_Jedi use the Force for knowledge and defense,_' she repeated the old mantra in her head. So, slowly, she nodded both her understanding and agreement.

"So, we're protected for now. This should hold us over till we get back to that cave tonight. I'd personally rather be in the cave because it was enclosed and rain won't get to us. We have roughly six and half hours to go before it's safe to go back there."

He walked back over to the make-shift hut they had built together. She almost laughed at him as he conjured a big squashy chair, which he fell almost bonelessly into it and breathed a deep sigh of relief. With an inattentive motion of his arm, he somehow conjured a second one for Aayla to sit in.

With a gesture for her to sit, he tiredly said, "I suppose you probably want some answers to questions now."

She sat down as he asked her, and nodded, "Yes, however, you look dead on your feet and I don't think we're in any rush. I have a feeling we'll be stuck here for a while."

She paused and tried to think about exactly what they needed to wait upon and what tasks they would have to perform. "We need to make sure the clones not only leave the planet but leave the system before we attempt to bring those ships out from cover. Then we'll need to move them together so we can dismantle and rebuild them. All of it is military hardware. We have to change them enough so they won't be recognized by scanners, because people will think we've stolen them if they're being flown by civvies. We'll have plenty of time to 'talk' during all that. For now, you should lie down and rest. Six and a half hours is just the minimum we need to wait to move. I'd personally rather not remake our camp in the middle of the night, so let's wait till morning to leave."

She watched him absorb her words, before he slowly nodded in agreement and stood up. He pointed his wand at the ground in front of him and a large ball of blue flame appeared. "That blue ball flame should last about four to five hours. For now I'm going to go take a shower and change clothes into something a bit more comfortable. I just get the feeling I don't need full-fledged combat robes and everything associated to them at the moment. I guess we may as well leave the tent up if we'll be here for the night. I'll probably crash on the couch in there eventually."

Aayla watched as he walked towards the tent and stopped. He looked like something bothered him, and weighed heavily on his mind. Then he shook his head and went on inside to shower, which left Aayla alone outside.

It was a quiet night that began to descend the fungal world. Temperatures during Felucian nights often plummeted to very cold temperatures due to the storm systems that often moved in overnight. It was weather cycle that depressed and slowed down even the hardiest of warriors. Cold rain at night, stifling heat and humidity in the day. She slowly acclimated to the brutal combination just as everyone else did, but she could not wait to leave the planet behind.

Thus far on this particular tour of duty on the planet there had been no need for her to spend many nights exposed to the elements. So tonight was a new experience for her. The opportunity to rest while outdoors was an event that did not occurr often for a Jedi Knight, though she secretly wish it could have occurred on some resort world rather than the deathtrap of Felucia. The native predators were quiet fearsome on their own, and then some moron over the course of the eons had the gall to import Acklays and Rancors to Felucia.

The Acklays were the most numerous predators on the planet. They were large bug-like creatures with massive claws that hunted in packs. They would swarm over battlefields looking for carrion to devour, sometimes with the fighting still going on. She hoped the protections would keep them away like Harry said, but she still planned on staying somewhat awake tonight just in case they didn't.

Her thoughts on the vicious wildlife of the planet was interrupted by Harry's return from the tent He was showered, as indicated by his wet hair. He donned a well-worn uniform that spoke of having seen much use in the past. It wasn't nearly as heavily armored as the previous outfit he had worn, and it looked like it was far more comfortable to her eyes.

"I don't think I'm going to be able to stay awake much longer without resorting to potions to stay conscious, so I'm going to turn in a few. I was wondering if you could do me one favor beforehand." She nodded at this and motioned for him to continue.

"This is going to sound a bit odd. I'm not sure if you noticed or not, but I don't speak the same language as you. I'm using magic to understand what you say and for you to understand what I say."

The internal workings of her mind ground to a halt and locked. Harry saw her confusion and waved his hand, which created an almost cleansing wash of Force that passed over her gently. He began to speak again, only… she could suddenly not understand a word he said.

He spoke on for about a minute, all the while the smirk on his face grew more pronounced. Finally, he raised his arm and waved his hand again, a cool breeze of force passed over her like a soft wind. It felt like a Jedi mind trick, but not quite as invasive.

"Understand me now?" he said softly.

She slowly nodded and looked at him, quite puzzled. She voiced her thoughts out loud, "So you can use the Force to make me understand you, and I assume you understand me. What's the point of mentioning this?"

The self-satisfied smirk returned. "There's a way on my world, to teach someone a foreign language and the associated writing. I cast a spell and then I give you roughly twenty specific words to repeat back to me and then ask you to write out about thirty specific sentences along with all the letters and numbers of your alphabet. While you do this, I'll be slowly extracting a memory of this from you. I can absorb it, and learn the language you were thinking of. It'll knock me on my butt for about six to twelve hours while my mind tries to figure out up from down with all the information. That should be plenty of time for us to then move on to the cave."

She sat there stunned by the possibilities of this ability. A type of direct knowledge transfer that only required up to twelve hours downtime. The minds' of the clones had been imprinted with knowledge at a young age, because absorption of large amounts of information and knowledge was not feasible with older minds when inserted via optical imprint. If Harry was saying he could teach her and others simply via the Force….

"I can't pass general knowledge this way. The spell seems to only work with spoken languages, writing, and some things and locations. Like, I would get the word 'Felucia' from you and I would vaguely know that it was a planet, but I wouldn't get any of the general information about it. Likewise, I would get knowledge of some person named 'Aayla Secura', but I wouldn't know anything other than she is some sentient being you have some passing knowledge of or have encountered."

She watched Harry pause and then tentatively ask, "Is this something you would be willing to do for me?"

"Yes, if you let me learn your language this way? It would be perfect for undercover missions. You and I would be the only people in the whole galaxy who know both your system of writing and your language. It's the perfect setup."

"I can definitely do that, but you'll need to learn Occlumency first. It a mental discipline that was usually overlooked by my people, but it's incredibly valuable. Helps you organize your mind, protect it from intrusion, and slowly gain a much higher appreciation for your own magic and how it feels. Once you know that, I can teach you English."

"Great!" Aayla beamed. She actually looked forward to this. She had been at war for three years, and investigations into the Trade Federation, Separatist intrigues, and crime lords had occupied the entirety of the decade before that. To actually learn something new, especially about a topic no Jedi had ever been taught held a lot of appeal to her.

"I could teach you Huttese as well later," Aayla thought out loud. "The Hutts are gangsters, and control quite a bit of the criminal underworld in the galaxy. I do a lot of undercover work because it's easy for my race to just blend in amongst criminals. Huttese is good to know for that. Plus, Humans never learn Huttese unless they're life-long criminals raised by other criminals or they grew up as slaves. Any adult Human who attempts to learn Huttese almost never does it properly and they stick out like a sore thumb. They're never trusted because of this. Teaching you like this would be a gift from the Force if we're trying to stay hidden in Hutt-controlled territories."

Harry nodded in acknowledgement. "Shall we?"

What followed was one of the oddest experiences of Aayla's life. She spoke twenty seemingly random words in Galactic Basic while Harry held his wand to her temple. When she began, he slowly pulled a metallic blue strand of gelatinous liquid from her head. He placed the strand in a vial which he conjured from thin air. He then provided her writing utensils, and had her write her numbers and alphabet, along with thirty very specific sentences. While she did this, he repeated the strand extraction and produced another filled vial.

She was surprised when he said they should both go to sleep in the tent without a guard left on watch outside. Harry argued that the wards he had erected would be more than adequate to protect them, and they should be safe to use the tent because of them. He was very adamant that no predator would come near their shelter due to the wards as well. His arguments eventually won her over due to how thoroughly he believed in their strength, and she felt it would definitely be nice to have a bit of rest after the long day.

"I'll take the couch, you can take the bedroom," said Harry.

"No, you take the bed," she insisted. She could quite plainly see that Harry was already exhausted and would be out of commission even longer due to the language transfer he wanted to undergo. There was no need for him to wake up with stiff sore muscles since he slept on an uncomfortable piece of furniture.

"Look, you were injured very badly today, and haven't had a proper rest either. Plus I'm not sure everything's hit you quite yet with what's happened. It'll be better for you to be in a bed."

"Ok, that settles it," said Aayla, with a mischievous smile. She felt Harry's sense of humor was contagious, and it was time for a joke at his expense. "We'll both share the bed."

"What?" stammered Harry, definitely taken back by her response. "I'm not sure that's really appropriate for the two of us."

"Oh come off it. Jedi do not get involved romantically. We don't form attachments or have intimate relationships with others. It's not like anything would happen."

Harry just looked at her half-exasperated and said, "Well Wizards do form attachments, and quite frankly it makes me a bit uncomfortable." She saw him involuntarily glance at her cleavage before he blushed and turned away.

She decided it would do no good to push further. It was definitely time to let him off the hook and soothe his fragile male ego, so she said "Harry, I'm going to be a wreck after what happened today. It'll be nice to be close to someone. You'll be unconscious the whole time anyways, right? It'll be good for me to be near someone and just feel safe. Please?"

She knew the moment she pouted with her eyes that she had him. She saw his shoulders deflate and he said, "Fine. But no funny business. I'm trusting you to not like, draw on me or turn my clothes pink or something."

She beamed at him, "Knew you would agree. I need my clothes from your trunk by the way."

He pulled out his trunk and left it open at the compartment with her things. He pulled out another trunk from somewhere and pulled out some clothes for himself and walked into the bedroom. She normally did not sleep with anything on, but she figured Harry would not react well to seeing her naked just quite yet. So, she had donned a simple loose fitting Jedi robe when she walked into the bedroom to see Harry dead still as he stood and stared blankly at the walls.

He looked troubled, that was quite easy for her to see. Aayla walked over and placed a tentative hand on his arm and was shocked to feel the depth of his despair and loss through her empathy.

"Harry what's wrong?" she asked immediately. She had no clue how his mood could change so rapidly.

"It's gone. That window there and the ceiling. They can be charmed to show specific scenes and locations, just as if the tent was pitched there." She actually saw a tear fall down his cheek as he was unable to continue. Comprehension dawned as she understand what had stopped the man so completely and drowned him in his emotions.

"None of them work now, do they?" she asked quietly.

He only acknowledged her by almost imperceptibly shake of his head. She reached and pulled him into an embrace and began to gently rub the back of his head and his back. She couldn't remember the last time she had done something like this for another being. The idea of embracing and comforting another Jedi like this seemed absolutely absurd to her. Maybe her former Master Quinlan Vos, or even Master Fisto while they had skirted their mutual attraction to each other, but for some reason this seemed right and no one would ever be allowed to tell her otherwise.

Suddenly though, she felt his emotions change from slowly settling sadness to surprise and embarrassment. He tried and failed to pull away, and she looked at him quizzically. "What's wrong, Harry?"

"Nothing."

Aayla could not help but laugh at how defensive it sounded. "I don't think so. I felt your embarrassment, what's wrong."

She watched with amusement as he looked like a frightened child who wanted nothing more than to run away at that very instant. "Please Harry, you're my friend. You might just be my only friend to survive today. You can trust me."

He looked suddenly sheepish and said, "I just noticed something smelled very good and I didn't recognize it, and then I realized it was you."

The response was nothing close to what she had expected, and Aayla felt herself nearly fall over in laughter. "Harry, I know I took a shower but I spent over an hour outside in the heat afterwards. I'm sure I already sweat through the clothes I changed into. I stink like bantha poodoo."

She saw him shake his head before he took off and threw his shirt in the corner. After he sat down on the bed, he purposefully looked at the vials and his wand still in his hands. "I stand by what I said, you smelled amazing." He sighed and again looked up at the ceiling.

"I guess there's nothing for it then. Might as well make some new memories and places to save," he said quietly.

A quick wave of his wand replaced the ceiling with the nighttime sky of Felucia. There was not a cloud in the sky and the stars shone brightly down upon them.

'_Even the peaceful nighttime sounds come in_,' thought Aayla, as she marveled at the clever use of the Force that no Jedi would have ever dreamed to use in such a manner.

"I'm going to go ahead and start absorbing your language. I figure at the most it should take twelve hours. Will you be ok on your own during that time?"

"I'll be fine Harry, you do your mind thing and I'll get some sleep."

Aayla watched with avid fascination as he laid back and uncorked a vial. He pulled the strand out with his wand, and dangled it to his forehead. His face took on a look of great concentration and she could see him grit his teeth in discomfort. The first strand finished after about a minute. Afterwards, he immediately he picked up the second vial with a shaking hand and repeated the process. He only just finished the process before his eyes rolled back and he dropped his wand to the floor.

She rushed forward and felt for a pulse. The touch immediately exposed her to the oddest emotion she had ever felt. The only words she could use to describe it were steely perseverance. There didn't seem to be anything else present at all. Hopefully this was a normal reaction to what he had done. He hadn't, after all, told her what would happen.

'_Well, if he's going to be unconscious anyways…_' thought Aayla. She removed her robe to expose her naked body underneath. '_It would not have been comfortable to sleep in that itchy Jedi robe anyways_,' Aayla inwardly justified to herself.

As she lay down next to Harry, she suddenly realized with dread it was very likely her sleep tonight would be plagued by nightmares of her recent experiences. She looked up at that moment and let the beauty of the sky above calm her. As long as she could see the sky, she was free and alive. At least that is what she always secretly thought to herself.

As she sat there, the twin moons of the planet rose to an even higher prominence in the faux sky above her. They provided a low level of light to the room that was hardly uncomfortable. She could not help but feel that it was nice to stargaze without the uncomfortable humidity or bugs of this world.

For some reason, this particular night reminded her of home. She abruptly snorted to herself. It was, of course, a home that had sold her into slavery before Master Vos had miraculously saved her. That home was not what she specifically thought of, but a knowingly idealistic memory of a place she could've belonged in a different time and place. She watched the stars for ten more minutes before, with a last glance at the furrowed forehead of her savior next to her, turned over and fell asleep.

-o0o0o-

Harry had no idea how long he had been unconscious. It had taken a while to sort through the incredible amount of information Aayla's memories had given him. One time, as an experiment, Hermione had given him her knowledge of the English language. It took an obscene amount of time to absorb what felt like dictionaries worth of words he had never heard of before. His absorption of Aayla's knowledge of Galactic Basic felt comparable to his experience with Hermione. If nothing else, it was quite obvious Aayla was incredibly intelligent.

As he slowly came out of the depths of slumber, Harry became more aware of his current situation. His arms were wrapped around Aayla, and she in turn had one arm underneath his head with her head nuzzled up into his neck. He found that he had been subconsciously rubbing one of her brain tails. He immediately stopped and moved his hand away, only to realize that underneath her brain tail was her completely bare back. The next realization that came to him was that the two firm mounds pressing into his chest and side were definitely not pillows of the variety his head currently lay upon.

"Oh, why did you stop?" he heard her moan into a spot in his neck just below his ear.

In spite of his embarrassment at the situation, he laughed softly at the knowledge that she had been awake the whole time. Harry lightly caressed and rubbed her right brain tail again.

"Sorry, I wasn't aware I was actually doing this. I just woke up and thought you might take offense so I stopped."

"You're forgiven, so long as you keep doing that."

Harry focused his mind solely upon the incredibly firm appendage that lay flat against Aayla's back. Every so often, he would hit a spot between two muscles, which caused her to moan further into his neck. He purposefully avoided rubbing these spots too often, because the primal sounds of pleasure Aayla would voice weren't conducive to Harry keeping his own thoughts under control.

They lay in silence for a few minutes before Harry realized something. "You know, the translation spells have worn off. Did you realize we just spoke to each other in the same language?"

Aayla's head shot straight up and she looked him straight in the face, "We did didn't we? This is so amazing. I can't wait till I'm able to learn your language." She lay her head back down again within the comfy space between his shoulder and neck and squeezed him a bit more tightly. "I started learning languages later than many of the other padawans, so I've always had to work harder to keep pace with them."

A few more minutes passed, before she voiced a question that apparently bothered her, "I know we've been laying here longer than the night is on this planet. So why is the sky still dark?" she asked, her voice slightly muffled by his neck.

"I set the scene so that it would be night until specified otherwise. I'll need to grab another image for daytime. You can set them to rotate to follow a proper schedule of day and night, or you can set it to be on one or the other until the setting is changed again."

He felt her nod her understanding before she somehow settled in even closer to his body.

"Personally, I'm in no hurry to move, are you? I think we earned the right to be lazy after everything we both did yesterday. So I see no need to make it bright in here with daylight." said Harry.

She snorted, "No. After yesterday, I think we deserve to just lay around for a bit." She groaned again as his hands, which had not stopped their movements, apparently hit another sensitive area. "People normally need to be taught how to do what you're doing. How are you managing it already?"

"I honestly don't know. I have a fair bit of medical knowledge, and I did scans of these while you were under the stasis spells so I could make sure they weren't injured. I got a good mental picture of how the muscles in them are laid out from doing that. From there I'm just trying to hit each individual muscle the best I can."

"Speaking of which, what are these called? I feel like I'm insulting you by somehow calling them brain tails or tentacles in my own head."

He heard her giggle a bit, and he had no idea what she found funny. "Brain tails isn't that bad a description for their names in Basic. We call them Lekku if you were speaking Ryl. The one you're on now, the right one, is called Tchin. The left one is called Tchun."

"Lekku, Tchin, Tchun, the Twi'lek's language is called Ryl, and you're from the planet… Ry'loth?. Got it. Is Ryl something I can learn as well?"

She looked up at him strangely, "You would want to learn my language?"

"Sure, why not? I'm sure it would be more comfortable for you to speak in the language of your own people, right?"

Aayla smiled a genuine smile at him, and placed her head down. He felt her Lekku move slightly afterwards, and he wondered if that subconsciously meant something.

"They look a lot different without the wrappings on them," he commented out loud as he watched the lekku move slightly.

"We wrap them the same way you Humans style your hair. There are fashions that go in and out. Some are protective in nature, others are decorative, and some are ceremonial. Usually you will see Twi'leks with some sort of protection covering them entirely. You have to remember that the part of my brain that extends into them contains both long-term memory and part of my subconscious. If they're damaged, it's a good chance I could die."

Harry felt his breath hitch at how close Aayla really had been to death yesterday. If any of those blasters had hit one of her Lekku, there would have been no way for him to repair the damage. For all of magic's wonders, brain damage was an area where there was no cure.

"It's alright," he heard her say. "I'm okay and you healed the injuries I received. It's no use dwelling on the past or what could have been for something like that. Keep your thoughts within the Living Force."

"What's the Living Force? Heck, what's the Force?" asked Harry.

She lifted her head again at his question, and this time it gave Harry a startlingly clear view at her large chest smashed into his. She was about to speak when she noticed his eyes flicker downwards and she chuckled. "If you can tear your eyes away from my breasts long enough, I might just tell you."

"Well either put your head back down or go get dressed. You are the naked one mashing her chest into mine after all, 'Miss No-Relationships-Allowed'."

Aayla seemed to seriously ponder her choices and settled upon laying her head back down. '_She may not be able to have relationships, but she certainly knew how to be a tease_,' thought Harry.

"Well, the Force is an energy field, created by all living things in the galaxy. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds us and the galaxy together."

Harry noticed she seemed to stop, as if that explained the concept thoroughly. "Ok, that sounded really good as some sort of public relations speech, but what is it really? All that stuff you just said really means nothing in the grand scheme of things. What does the Force mean to you?"

She paused a few seconds before saying, "I don't know. It's… energy that simultaneously responds to and obeys a Jedi's needs, and we Jedi do the same for the Force's desires. Being able to interact with it allows you to develop quicker reflexes, superior strength, and a bit of precognitive ability during conflicts. It also allows us to see possibilities in the future, past, and the present during meditation. Jedi try to use the Force to help maintain peace in the galaxy. Sith, who are our enemies, try to dominate the Force so that it can be used as a tool to enslave others…"

Aayla gave a great shuddering sigh, "…and they've succeeded. Chancellor Palpatine has revealed himself through his actions yesterday to be a Sith. He now rules the galaxy with an army of tens of millions at his beck and call."

Harry slowly absorbed what she said. He knew she had barely skimmed the surface of what the Force truly was, just as he could not possibly describe magic accurately in under a minute.

"So what is a Jedi?" Harry asked in an attempt to keep the conversation going.

"We are the guardians of peace and justice in the Republic. For twenty-five thousand years, the Republic has stood in one form or another. While it has stood, the Jedi Order has been its guardians, negotiators, and arbiters. Usually we work on behalf of the Republic Senate. In times of war, we serve as soldiers and sometimes generals like myself. We follow a code, which is, essentially, the basis for our religion and way of life. We actively avoid emotions or and all aspects of materialism. We avoid anger, fear, and hatred because they are the way to the Dark Side of the Force. Giving into those base emotions takes a person down a dark path from which most do not return. I myself have strayed once down that road… and turning away from the whispers of the dark side was one of the hardest things I've ever done."

As she spoke and he pondered her words, Harry could not help but notice the contradictions between Aayla's actions both yesterday and this morning and the Code she was supposed to live by as she described it. "So you train yourselves to be like those droids we picked up yesterday. Unfeeling, cold, and emotionless? You seem to laugh, cry, and be happy. It seems a contradiction to me."

"I'm... considered quite liberal with my interpretations of things. It's why I likely don't have an apprentice. We call them Padawan Learners. A Master is only allowed one apprentice at a time. Even though I'm well past the stage where I should have been granted the title of Master and taken one, I've never been assigned someone to teach. The Council often feels I'm too reckless, or I don't pay enough heed to the traditions of the Order."

Harry quickly realized that, whatever the indiscretions were in Aayla's past, they were not likely a safe subject to bring up if they had prevented her from a promotion within the Order. Instead, he changed the subject and asked, "So what about the Sith?"

"To be honest, I don't know much about the Sith, other than really general things. Knowledge of them has been suppressed for centuries by the Council. The Sith philosophy relies upon anger and hatred to fuel their use of the Force. They also tend to use fear and treachery to corrupt others to their beliefs. There are only ever two official Sith at a time. One Master and their Apprentice. The Apprentice eventually surpasses the Master's skill and knowledge… and then will kill the Master to take his place. That's the Rule of Two with them. One to possess the power, and one who craves it. An Apprentice who doesn't have the potential to kill the Master will be eliminated and another will be trained in their place."

"Wow, you're kidding? What moron would sign up for that? If there's only two Sith, than how many Jedi are there in the Galaxy?"

"Before the battle that started the Clone War, there were a little less than ten thousand Jedi. Yesterday, I think that number was around five or six thousand."

"Only ten thousand total Jedi in your entire Order which spanned a galaxy? So the whole galaxy was just taken over by only two bad guys?"

He could feel her wince at the statement, "They had allies. He had corporations and corrupt politicians. And, the more I think about wider events in the galaxy, a plan to destroy the Jedi that has been active at least the last fifteen years. And that plan seems to have been executed perfectly. But yes, in the end, it always falls back to two Sith. We killed the Apprentice twice. First there was Darth Maul who Master Kenobi killed over a decade ago, and then Master Skywalker killed Count Dooku a few weeks ago. Dooku had changed his name to Darth Tyranus."

Harry could feel this all was a sore subject for her, so decided to let it drop. He had plenty of time to figure out the political and historical landscape of the mess he now found himself immersed in.

He gave her a quick squeeze with both arms and tried to change the subject again, "Ok, enough depressing talk. Can you tell me about you?"

"My life is kind of depressing in some places too, Harry," said Aayla with a much more subdued voice after a few moments silence.

"Come on. We're friends, aren't we? I promise I won't judge. We're going to be stuck here together for a while. I just want to get to know you better."

A deep sigh wracked her body, one that he knew he had done countless times when he had discussed his own life in the past. He briefly wondered how wise it really was to ask her to open up this quickly, but the damage had already been done.

She began to speak hesitantly. "Well, I guess it starts with my childhood on Ry'loth. I'm a female Twi'lek, which means, unless I was promised to be a mistress to a clan or family chief, I would be sold into slavery off-world when I became a teenager. As a young girl we're taught to dance and I had just begun those lessons. Not artful dancing, but the dances of whores, strippers and seductresses. As we get older, the training is even more directly… sexual in nature. It's what my race has been born and bred for over the eons: Warrior men and sex-slave women. As it was, I had just been sold by my clan to a Hutt to start my training, when, the Hutt was attacked minutes later. I was fortunate to manifest some Force potential during the fight."

After he bit back the automatic anger at the knowledge of her species' practices, Harry was lost for words. He had no clue how to respond to what he had just heard. Not counting the knowledge of being a sex-slave, it seemed very similar to his own childhood. Harry _had_ for all intents and purposes been raised as a slave by his Aunt and Uncle before he was _rescued_ from that terrible life by Hagrid. All he could do was continue to rub Aayla's back, while he did his best to ignore the rough scar tissue under fingers. He absent-mindedly thought he would need to start the scar removal treatments tonight.

"I was lucky. A visiting Jedi Master and his Padawan, Quinlan Vos found me. I was saved from that life. I vividly remember standing on the auction block and being sold as a slave to a Hutt who would've begun my full training. I remember being so meek and having no hope."

"The day I arrived at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant was one of the scariest days of my life. I kept thinking I wouldn't be good enough to be a Jedi, and that they would send me back to be a slave. Sometimes those feelings still come back to me. All the behaviors of a proper slave that were _trained_ into me as a child. When that happens, I try to remember something Master Vos told me once. That 'it's good to question yourself, but not to doubt'. Sometimes it's hard not to slip back into that way of thinking, but I've slowly gotten better."

At Aayla's words, Harry recalled even more of his old childhood and how frighteningly similar it was to hers. For years, his relatives had beaten into him that he was useless and that his only value was to provide service to others. He knew exactly what Aayla meant when she talked about slipping into old behaviors.

"I was trained first by Master Vos' teacher, Master Tholme," Aayla continued, apparently too lost in her own memories to notice the effects her words had upon the wizard she clutched beneath her.

"Eventually, because we were so close, Master Vos took me on as a Padawan after he became a Jedi Knight. He is basically the father I never had. The two of us were both poisoned at one point years later, wiping our memories and allowing someone to tempt us to the Dark Side of the Force. We recovered eventually, though my road and retraining were quite long."

"Since then, I guess you could say I've seen many things in this galaxy; both good and bad. I was part of the 212 Jedi who fought on Geonosis at the battle that started this war. A little over thirty of us walked out of that mission alive."

"After the war started, we were deployed as Generals in charge of the clone army battlegroups. Usually there would be two to five of us in a battlegroup. I've had various missions around the galaxy, eventually leading to the current one here on Felucia. The Separatists poisoned the planetary water supply. Our job was to stop them and undo the damage. Until yesterday that is. If they've pulled out after the attack, it means they've left the natives on their own. The poison will eventually kill or alter most life on the planet."

Harry could see exactly where that would lead and finished her sentence for her, "… and it'll be considered Jedi sabotage, with you and Barriss being blamed for this particular incident."

She lifted her head again. Her golden eyes stared in shock into his as implications of statement registered to her mind, before she flinched as she realized he was right.

"We know the truth, Aayla. If everything truly did go bad out there, and there's no other Jedi left… I can protect you." Harry laughed at the how easy it would be to hide someone with an entire galaxy of planets at their disposal. "I can hide you so well no one would be able to find you ever again. I can change your appearance so no one would ever recognize you, even machines and cameras. Don't worry, ok?"

Lost in her own thoughts, Harry saw her barely nod in acquiescence. He thought back to her statement about being poisoned and remembered something from yesterday.

"You know the stuff you said you were poisoned with? I think it still showed up in the scans I did. There's a potion my people have, it's called a purging potion. It's rather nasty, but I think it'll help in your case. I still have a few of them in stasis in my trunk. After drinking it, you basically throw up every twenty minutes for an hour. First few are obviously stomach contents. But the rest are any long-term foreign chemicals that your body can't remove on its own. You're welcome to try it if you want. May have some long-term health benefits for you to get any remnants of that stuff out of you."

"Yeah, we could try that I guess. Doesn't sound very pleasant though."

"Oh it's definitely not, but I think it would be worth it in the long-run. Come on, enough depressing talk. Let's go get some food and take inventory of exactly what we have," said Harry. "Just let me get up first, so I don't feel bad ogling you. Because I just know there's not a chance in hell I won't."

Aayla seemed to be brought out of her funk with that and laughed, "You're too sweet, Harry. I bet all the girls were falling over you on your planet."

Laughing mirthlessly, Harry shook his head. "Now there's something where the truth depends greatly upon your point of view. I'll tell you later. You told me your story, only fair that I tell you mine."

Harry got up and picked her discarded robe from the floor. He threw it over his shoulder onto the bed without a glance and walked into kitchen. A hot breakfast seemed like an attempt by his mind to impose some sense of normality upon the absolute insanity of the previous day. He found the preparation of a breakfast of eggs, bacon, and toast on a different planet to be quiet surreal. There was also the ever-present worry Aayla wouldn't like any of the food or wouldn't be able to eat it. He would just have to wait and see.

The door to the bedroom opened and he laughed when he saw Aayla wander out in one of his muggle button up shirts and a pair of his boxers. Her overall body was small enough that the size of her chest didn't seem to make that big a difference to the fitted shirt. "Raiding my closet, eh?"

"I didn't feel like sorting through any of my own clothes. Yours were right there after all," she said cheekily. "Not sure what you're making to eat, but it certainly smells good."

"It's not the healthiest breakfast I could probably make. It's kind of a standard breakfast on my world in a bunch of countries if you take the time to cook for yourself. Cooked eggs of a bird that's raised for food, some thin salted meat that's fried and rather fatty in content, and some toasted bread."

After a nod of acknowledgement she said, "I've had similar, though I've personally never had much use for learning to cook in a proper kitchen. Normally we find and kill our food while we're out training or on a mission and cook it over an open fire," responded Aayla as she looked over the plate of food Harry passed to her.

"Well you won't have to worry about that for a bit. There's a decent amount of food in storage here. Unfortunately, I doubt the instant inventory restocking features will work across universes. Eventually it'll run out, but for now we easily have at least a few months of food."

They ate mostly in silence for a few minutes, where the only comments made were Aayla's compliments on his cooking. Eventually they finished and Aayla's eyes took on a mischievous glint, "I can't wait till we get off-world. Then I can show you the kind of food that I like."

"As long as it still isn't alive and moving at the time I'm supposed to eat it. I tend to prefer my food cooked as well," said Harry, not at all liking the sense of dread that moved up from his stomach at Aayla's words. "Anyways, I'll clean up, you go take your shower or bath or whatever you feel like. I'll check the wards outside in the meantime. Probably should start figuring out how we're going to inventory everything we have here as well."

She nodded her agreement, and Harry had to slam down on his Occlumency shields to suppress his thoughts after he saw her unknowingly swing her hips as she slowly left the kitchen.

-o0o0o-

Household chores never took long with the aid of magic. There were many cleaning charms he knew the spells for, but he had long gave up on using them as he became more and more comfortable with simple 'intent' behind his spells. There was surely a spell to pick a pan off a stove, another to place it in the sink, another to turn water on, another to dispense soap, etc. Harry's magic had progressed to the point where a few general spells with intent were fired in specific places of the kitchen and the work simply performed itself without the need to babysit them.

With the dishes taken care of, Harry headed outside. He recast the ultraviolet-light, bug-repelling, and cooling charms that had long since expired. The wards looked fine after he gave them a cursory glance. He felt they had taken a few hits from larger predators as they wandered near, but none had so much as touched the outer boundaries before they were compelled to leave. The protections looked solid and were at full-strength.

The flimsy shelter they had built together the night before still stood despite an apparently large storm that had passed through, so Harry felt he could at least get some use from it when he sat and leaned against one of its walls. He ran through some Occlumency exercises to calm him mind and organize his thoughts on what Aayla had told him this morning. The Jedi definitely had their faults, just like wizards did. The main thing that surprised him was, at their height right before the Clone War, there were only just ten-thousand Jedi in an entire galaxy. There were more than ten thousand wizards in just England!

Questions surged through Harry's mind. Were magical capabilities that rare in this universe or did something prevent its manifestation here? Were there more stringent requirements that prevented someone who had magic to become a Jedi? These people certainly didn't raise children of Jedi since relationships seemed to be banned. That meant that not only did the very small population of Jedi not pass their gift on to another generation of direct offspring, new Jedi had to be identified from the thousands of worlds in the Republic by non-Jedi in what was probably a very inefficient manner.

A distant rumble of thunder suddenly broke his thoughts. The sky was perfectly clear, so there was no approaching thunderstorm. Confused as to what disturbed him, his eyes settled upon a ship in the distant horizon. Harry quickly cast an illusion over the tent and ran inside. Aayla had just emerged from the bathroom and wore a similar rugged brown leather outfit to the one he had seen her in while on patrol the previous day.

"We've got incoming. There's a ship on the horizon. Not sure if they're coming here or not. I don't think it's worth hanging around to find out."

Aayla's eyes widened, "How quickly can we pack up the tent?"

"Two minutes to tear it down, another two minutes to tear down the wards. We can leave everything inside as it is. Nothing that happens outside the tent will affect things inside."

She nodded and ran outside with him. They only stopped to grab the duffel bag where the tent was normally stored. He was wrong about his original estimate. The tent was dismantled and packed in under thirty seconds. The ward stones were dismantled and stuffed into the tent bag a minute later.

Aayla had stared at the distant ship nervously, since she was unable to help him collapse the tent or dismantle the wards. Harry handed her the duffel bag as he approached and fired a quick reducto at the custom ward stone he had made the previous night. After he vanished the cloud of dust from the explosion along with temporary shelter they had made but not used, he quickly grabbed Aayla and side-along-apparated her the cave where he had originally healed her.

He heard Aayla grumble, "At least you get used to it the more you do it," but he paid her no mind.

The ward stones were instantly out of the bag and repositioned within the cave. Harry quickly recharged them after they were anchored to the same stone he had used previously. Harry then decided now was an excellent time for a Fidelius.

"Aayla, can you stand outside the cave for just about five minutes?"

She nodded and walked outside, despite clear signs that showed how curious she was. He quickly devoted a few minutes to the careful reassembly of the tent, then placed two additional small cubes at both the back and front of the cave. He then traced the perimeter of the shape the four cubes formed.

At each cube he reached, he stopped to whisper an enchantment to prepare the Fidelius to encompass the space between. Bit by bit, he poured magic into each stone as he set up the wards and protections, until finally he stopped at the entrance to the cave where Aayla was waited for him. A complicated wand movement followed, and he distantly heard Aayla's gasp as the cave slowly disappeared from her view.

Another minute worth of chanting later, he pointed his wand at his own chest and shouted, "Fidelio!"

Harry was enveloped in a white light that seemed to shrink before it finally disappeared. He hated the requirements of the Fidelius. It always wiped him out for a few hours and made him want to sleep. As he caught his breath, he looked over at Aayla, he chuckled at her open-mouth sense of awe at what he had done.

"I take it the Jedi don't have anything like that?" asked Harry.

She blinked, and then slowly shook her head. "I don't even know what that was, but it felt powerful. Why are we here anyways?" She had started to look around wildly as her arm inched towards her lightsaber.

Harry smiled at the comment. Though he may hate the setup, he always enjoyed the aftermath of the Fidelius Charm performed in front of someone. The sudden confusion and loss of memory were always a sight to see when they were restored. He held up his arms in a gesture of peace and to ask for her patience. A conjured piece of paper and a pen suddenly appeared in his hands and he wrote a sentence upon it in Galactic Basic.

"The sanctuary of a Jedi and a lost Wizard is found inside a cave in a mountain range on the planet Felucia."

The piece of paper that contained the secret was handed to Aayla while he said, "Read what it says and memorize it. Then think about what it means."

She tentatively reached out her hand and grasped the slip of paper. After she read the sentence, she lowered it and he could see her mind work through the secret. Suddenly she gasped as the secret was revealed to her.

"How? What?" spluttered Aayla, looking back and for the between Harry and the cave.

He took the piece of paper from her grip and quickly burned it with a wandless _Incendio_, Harry said "It's called the Fidelius Charm. It hides a secret inside a living soul. The secret can be a bit of information, a person, or a location. The only way you can know the secret is if the secret keeper tells you. Afterwards, anyone told the secret cannot pass the information on to others. Try it. Try to say out loud what that piece of paper had written on it."

Her mouth began to move but no sound came out. She tried for a few moments before she gave up and stared incredulously at Harry.

"We're now protected with some of the best protections I can put up. They could march a thousand troops up to the front of this cave, and so long as we're within the ward, they couldn't see us or the cave itself."

She nodded dumbly as she fathomed the implications. It took Aayla took a few moments to collect her thoughts. "I've never felt anything like that," she eventually whispered. "When the secret 'clicked', I felt this rush of the Force into my body. It was like it was restoring something to me."

"The Fidelius erases something from existence as long as the Charm is active. When it's placed upon a location, the ward will actually hide the target within a pocket dimension not too dissimilar to the interior of the tent. Even digital photography is affected. But it takes more power to hide something that's well-known and documented. Like, this Jedi Temple you keep speaking of. I bet billions of sentient people know about it and have seen it, probably more?"

Aayla nodded, "The number is easily in the trillions."

"Then there's no way a Fidelius could ever be cast upon it. Too much magic would be required to cast it. If I tried casting it on the Jedi Temple, it would probably kill me in the attempt."

Harry let a few moments of silence pass.

"Come on, let's go inside. We may have just woken up a few hours ago, but I'm already ready to go back to bed after casting that charm."

A pleasant, musical laugh met his ears, after which Aayla smiled and said, "You just want to go back to bed to see if I'll get naked again on top of you."

Harry raised an eyebrow at overt flirtation and inwardly felt some conflict. Aayla may comment all she wanted about no-attachments, but her actions often did not reflect the beliefs of her religion. He decided to hedge his bets and said "I won't deny that I found waking up with you in my arms to be quite the relaxing experience this morning."

Another mischievous look grew upon Aayla's face. He was saw this particular visage more and more as they talked. "Good answer," she said simply and walked into the tent.

'_Heaven help me if George and Angelina ever find a way here and team up with her_,' thought Harry as he followed her inside.

-o0o0o-

After his shower, Aayla watched with amusement as Harry unceremoniously fell onto one of the couches in the tent's sitting room. He had left both of his trunks open and unlocked so she could continue to go through the contents. What really surprised her was the trust he placed in her when he keyed her in to the trunks' security via her blood so she could access them whenever she wanted.

They had taken care of most of the inventory that belonged to Harry and had now moved on to the shrunken objects collected the previous day. The miniature stolen loot had been spread out around the room by Aayla while Harry was in the shower. There were distinct piles for food, medical supplies, armor, weapons, spare clothing and uniforms, data pads, and power cells. It was actually quite a lot when you looked at it all at once like this. It surprised even Aayla, who had not realized until now just how much stuff they had managed to pilfer from the clone army.

"We'll need credits as well," Aayla said as she turned her inventory list towards things that they did not possess. "Normally I would rely upon Jedi Order accounts, but I doubt those exist anymore. Trying to access them now would probably bring clone troopers right down on our heads. What you see here is all the resources we'll have."

Harry interjected with, "Plus what we find back at the base, plus what we may find inside ships. Also, I can do some permanent conjuration for a few precious metals. I can't do gold or platinum, but I can do any metal that's on the previous rows of the periodic table, which includes silver if it's valuable anywhere. I can conjure straight bars, or we can transfigure the metal into artwork, sculptures, or jewelry we can sell."

That caught her attention. This would be an excellent way to acquire money, one that was almost too good to be true. "That just might work. We'll need to be careful not to attract attention to ourselves though."

"You're forgetting I can apparate us around a planet quickly. We can sell five individual pieces in five different cities on the same planet within minutes of each other."

"That'll work," she said as she continued to revise her notes on the datapad. She was putting as wide a variety of information down as she could. Inventories, possible plans, escape routes, and places to hide.

"What about ship fuel? How expensive is it, and how long does it last?" asked Harry.

"Not that expensive. And it won't be that bad a hit on our finances if we're selling silver and other metals in quantities like you're talking about."

She saw him out of the corner of his eye suddenly look away. Harry quietly began thinking out loud, "I wonder…"

Random statements such as that usually grab people's attention whether the speaker intended to or not, and Aayla was no exception. "Wonder what?"

He looked at her without really seeing her. His eyes were unfocused and he slowly said, "There are runes that will produce water on demand, like from a faucet or a shower in this tent. Water has a very specific component to the runic array that says 'produce this molecule at this specific temperature in this quantity.' I was wondering if I could create a runic array which would magically create the fuel for the ship reactors. We would never need to refuel this way. And because its fuel, it doesn't need to last long. Many conjured materials vanish after a short while, but it won't matter with the fuel because it'll be burned quickly."

Aayla again felt her mouth drop at the possibilities. Harry looked clearly at her, smiled, and continued, "It might take a while. I'd have to do some research, and I'm not sure everything I would need to start is within books I have with me. I may need some help figuring out the molecular composition of it, but I think it's doable in the end. So long as there aren't any really heavy elements present in the fuel when it's done. That's about the only thing I can see throwing a wrench in the works."

The pair continued to empty and log the original contents of his trunks into the datapad. The sheer randomness of things Harry had struck Aayla as very odd. He had weapons, books, clothes, stored food, joke items, broomsticks, and other sports-specific items from his home world. He also had a trunk space full of very personal items. Pictures of family and friends, almost all of whom he said were now dead. It was varied and random, and spoke volumes that Harry wasn't just a mere warrior.

These two trunks had contained more new and strange objects than she would normally have seen in a year. She started to understand what the past day must have been like for Harry, and admired how well he handled his encounters with so many new things.

Three hours after they began to inventory their possessions, Aayla rubbed her bleary eyes and shut off her data pad. She really wanted to take a walk outside after their limited movements the entire day.

"Care for a walk outside?"

"Sure, let me put some gear on. I don't feel like taking any chances."

Harry seemed overly paranoid to her, but she couldn't really fault his logic. Portkeys were made for her in case they got in trouble that would take her back to the tent, and left another set in the tent that would lead to the airfield where they had hidden the ships. Their stolen ships were far enough away from the cave it wasn't worth taking the chance in case something happened to him. He also showed her how to shrink the trunks and pointed out the extra slots she could safely hide them in on her arm if she wore the holster.

The two then began their walk into the forest of lights. Night had already fallen since they had apparently slept very late into the day after their escapades the previous day. Aayla herself breathed in the cool fresh air of the planet with her eyes closed as they walked.

They continued in silence together for quite some time. Aayla's thoughts were upon what they could accomplish in the next few days before they began to tear down the ships. She knew she could cobble together something quite space-worthy if given the chance. Her only worry was whether Harry would feel useful or not. She had no problem doing the work herself, especially after Harry had done most of the work thus far, but she thought that Harry was one not to simply sit back and let another do everything.

She glanced at him, his eyes quite visible in the bright light of the two moons. There was still no glimmer of emotion from him, which slightly hurt her. She had subtly inquired about why he would sometimes exude emotions and sometimes he was like a blank durasteel wall to her. He said it was that mind-art, Occlumency, and the lack of emotion from him was mental shields that protected him from mind attacks.

She was hurt at first, thinking that he thought she would attack him. Then she realized it was just his natural paranoia. He probably kept those barriers up constantly. It was only in retrospect that she realized the emotions that she had become so accustomed to from him this morning were because she physically touched him to bypass the shields. It definitely made her feel safe the way he didn't openly lust after her, even when she admittedly flirted with him without shame. She would get flashes from him of those baser emotions, but they always were immediately squashed down. He respected her for her talents which he said he observed the previous day while on the march.

"What's wrong?" Harry asked.

"Just working out a puzzle," she said cryptically back. Now wasn't the time to ask him to lower his shields. She would just have to get used to the emptiness for now.

"Ok," he said, in a manner that did not hide how dubious he thought her answer. He returned his gaze to one of the flower trees. "Tomorrow I want to cut down a flower tree or two. Probably should get a few of the other kinds of plants, as well to see if we can find and render down any of the other native species. I believe I could probably make you a wand of your own using the materials. Would you be interested?"

"Definitely," she responded truthfully. She held no delusions she would get as accomplished as he was without years of practice. Harry said he started learning magic nearly eighteen years earlier. But even a few of the basic spells he described sounded quite useful, such as body-binds and silencing spells. She definitely wouldn't mind learning his transportation magic either.

"I have a few things I want to do as well tomorrow. Since we're stuck here, I want to start up my training again. It would be for a few hours a day. Would you like me to teach you?" she asked. Harry couldn't be considered a Padawan in her mind, and she didn't believe for a second he could possibly go Dark on her, but she wanted to pass on what she had learned. It bothered her that the Council never saw her as a suitable teacher. Granted, Harry could teach her just as much as she could teach him.

"Would I have to call you Master?" he said, quite cheekily. Then his smile widened even further, the mischievous glint in his eyes positively twinkled with reflected light, "Or maybe you would want me to call you Mistress."

'_Ok, maybe the boy does have some flirting skills,_' she thought as simultaneously pondered her response to the verbal challenge. With a retort already on her lips, she stopped. She decided discretion was the better part of valor in this situation, and changed the subject. "You know I told you my life story this morning, when are you going to tell me yours?"

The smile faded on his face, and for a brief moment, his green eyes that shown so brightly in the moonlight just seconds before had suddenly dimmed. He nodded slowly and said "Yeah, we can talk about that. Just depends on how much detail you want. Can we head back first though? I'd rather take another shower and then tell you while I do your treatment for tonight."

"Treatment?" she said in confusion. Were there additional medical problems he hadn't told her about?

"Your back," he said simply. "It'll take two to three weeks probably, every day for about an hour. I'll be able to remove all the scarring on it so by the end it'll look like nothing had ever happened."

She vaguely remembered his statements about that yesterday when she first woke up after the attack.

"Oh," was all she could eloquently manage. "Okay."

"By the way, how's your knee? I noticed you had a lot of damage and I think I may have helped it heal. I forgot to ask before now."

'_Eh?_' She shifted her attention specifically to her bad knee for the first time in a day. She put pressure on it and stretched it a bit in the manner she knew always caused her pain. But she found none now. It was as flexible as if she had never blown it out and had all those surgeries that never seemed to fix anything.

"It's fine. Better than fine actually. It hasn't felt this good in years. I hadn't noticed at all in fact."

"Good. That's what I was hoping for. It showed up when I did your full body scans, along with that compound that was still in your body. If you have any other old injuries, I have some rather unique medicine to heal it. In fact I need to do my own daily routine to acquire it in sufficient quantities."

Aayla saw him look at her abruptly. It was an odd look, quite calculating in nature. She eventually heard him mutter, "In for a knut…" and had no clue what that meant.

Finally he stopped. "I have a secret. One I've told almost no one. I've told my friends Fred, Angelina, and Hermione. A few others knew, but they died years ago." He sighed and closed his eyes. Aayla couldn't help but grab his hand, and she immediately felt his fear.

"You can tell me Harry. I won't betray you. Not after everything you've done for me. I take these kind of debts seriously. I will repay you someday."

He smiled a half-smile at this and she could feel his sudden sadness at her words. "Life-debts are brought up a lot with my people. Magic often demands their payment in strange, sometimes cruel ways. Please be careful what you say or vow in regards to that debt."

"Anyway, wizards on my planet can obviously learn many special abilities. Some take years to master. One is the ability to turn into an animal. A person who has learned to do this is called an Animagus. Normally, the forms are non-magical animals, however I never seem to do anything the normal way. There's a very rare bird on my world called a phoenix. They're creatures of fire, immortal. If it is killed, it bursts into flames and is reborn as a new hatchling from the ashes. My form is a white phoenix."

And to Aayla's shock, Harry immediately transformed into one of the most beautiful avian creatures she had ever seen. The bird was two feet tall with bright white plumage with blue tips on the ends of the feathers. Soft flames seemed to roll of the wings, yet did not give off any heat as Harry took flight and landed softly upon her shoulder.

Then, Harry trilled a greeting. It was easily the purest sound she had ever heard. The sound spoke to her very soul. It inspired hope in her heart that her future would be bright and comforted her at the same time. Suddenly, flames from the bird engulfed her and she suddenly found herself in front of the tent in the cave.

Harry leapt off of her shoulder and transformed back into his normal human form. "What did you think?" he tentatively asked.

She didn't even try to resist the sudden urge to hug him. "That was completely amazing. Can I learn something like that? How long did it take? Did we just travel by fire? It didn't feel anything like Apparition. Does your singing always sound so wonderful?"

Harry's smile grew as she asked her questions, and he simply held up his hands to hold off her questions. "Yes you can learn it, hopefully. But it took me years to learn. So it's not something you take on without patience. Yes we just travelled by fire. And the singing is one of the famous things Phoenix's are known for. Anyone who is good and is pure of heart will feel uplifted by the cry of a phoenix. People shrouded in darkness and evil will feel pain and despair at the sound."

"There's one other thing, the part that should interest you. The tears of a phoenix have healing powers. Each day, I try and force myself to cry as much as I can in vials. That's what helped my healing of you go so smoothly, and what healed your knee. I gave you quite a few injections of tears yesterday. So if you see a random bird sitting around crying into a glass vial, don't try cooking me for dinner."

She couldn't help but snort, but nodded nonetheless. Afterwards, she asked, "So not every wizard where you're from could do what you did for me? I take it from the phoenix form that you're special even for a wizard?"

"Yeah, you could say that. I was rather famous in my world. Something like this was just more attention I didn't need so I kept it secret. Let's go in and sit down. This will be a long story."

The two took a seat next to each other in the still train-wrecked sitting room. She saw his eyes take on a vacant, distant look as he pondered where to begin his tale. "I guess it kind of starts with the politics of my world. For the last three hundred years or so, Wizards purposely separated the magical and non-magical societies. The non-magical societies kept on advancing, developing better and better technology while the magical cultures stagnated in their isolation. The magical humans began to value their bloodlines more than they valued abilities. People with generations of magical blood began looking down upon the first generations. The government slowly became more and more corrupt, finding ways to keep the first-gens underfoot and denying them opportunities to truly become part of the society."

"Then there were the real extreme blood-purists. They would support the latest Dark Lord of the moment who would almost always spout how true wizards should enslave the first-generations and wipe out all the non-magicals. About thirty years ago, my parents were murdered by a rather powerful Dark Lord who was targeting me because of a prophecy saying I could vanquish him."

"Prophecy?"

"Yeah, the drunken ramblings of an old fraud. I'm still not convinced what she said was real and not made up to help her on a job interview."

"How old were you when you lost your parents?" asked Aayla quietly.

"I was just over a year old. Voldemort, was his name. He tried to kill me after he killed my parents. I somehow survived his attack, which rebounded and ripped his soul from his body. This made me famous throughout the entire magical world. They called me 'The-Boy-Who-Lived'." Harry spat the nickname, and she could feel the loathing he had for being called that name.

"An old man who had no right to do so, stuck his nose in my business and had me kidnapped from the ruins of my parents cottage and the arms of my rightful guardian. I was placed with my mother's non-magical sister. My aunt Petunia hated my sister, hated magic, and thus, hated me. It was 'ten dark years' that I was purposefully subjected to, as I once heard it described. It wasn't pleasant, that's all I'll say." Aayla could feel the barriers he kept around his mind slowly fall as he told the story. The echoes of his resurfaced old pain slowly became such a palpable thing in the room that her focus suffered because of its influence.

"Eventually, I found out I was a wizard just after I turned eleven years old. I was introduced to a world where everyone knew my name and had their expectations of how I should act and behave. That's about when the Dark Lord I defeated started to begin almost yearly efforts to re-embody himself. Each year I had a fight for my life, leading up to my fourth year when I was kidnapped and used in a ritual to give a body back to him. What followed was three years of hell before I eventually defeated him permanently."

"We had two years of relative peace and rebuilding, before the next Dark Lord hit. Achenar had a fascination with Demons. He destroyed the separation of societies in our world by summoning Demons publicly all around the world. There was no way to hide our society after that. The backlash all magical feared from the non-magicals at least got held back by everyone's universal need to stay alive."

"With the war over, who knows what will happen to the remaining Magicals now back on Earth. I hope they're not all hunted down and killed."

"Why would your people be hunted down?" asked Aayla incredulously.

"I'm not sure how it is with Humans here, but on my world, people fear what they don't understand. They are jealous of others who have abilities they'll never have. I can see that being an underlying problem the Jedi will face here. Do you think the normal people in the galaxy will understand a 'Sith' has taken over? Or will they just assume a rogue Jedi has caused all this death and destruction and blame all of you collectively?"

"Hopefully something like that would never happen here," Aayla said aloud. That would be horrible, to be hunted down by a galaxy they had all voluntarily sworn to protect. She doubted anyone on the council had ever conceived something like that could occur. If it happened, it would blindside the Jedi just as badly as the clones' traitorous actions.

"Hope for the best, plan for the worst. It's a good motto to live by," said Harry quietly.

"That's a very cynical way of viewing things. I see the value of it, but the council would definitely not approve of it."

"Then they're hypocrites, or have lost intelligence somehow over the eons of their 25,000 years of existence. Somewhere along the way, the Jedi made the back-up plan to evacuate all the kids, right? That back-up plan Shaak Ti mentioned, remember? Somewhere along the way, someone planned for the worst, and that planning hopefully just saved the butts of all your kids."

She couldn't help but laugh. The Council was comprised of stodgy old men and woman. Her two close friends, Masters Shaak Ti and Luminara Unduli, offered what she considered the few voices of reason. She never particularly cared for the Council, and avoided them whenever possible.

"Anyways, with war starting again on my world, I became a good little soldier. I started studying battle and siege magic. It takes a bit of skill to cast, but more importantly, it takes raw power. There hasn't been a fully recognized Battle Mage on my world for centuries. It was my job to clear and disrupt battlefields so others had an easier time accomplishing their missions. That was the primary role I was assigned. But I found I really liked being a healer instead. I started spending more and more of my time after battles in hospitals, helping people I knew who weren't being treated as quickly as I would have liked. Eventually I got enough attention because of the results I was getting that I got orders from High Command to spend my off-hours in hospitals learning directly from doctors."

"A warrior with the hands of a healer. A true hero." She couldn't resist the gentle joke that praised him at the same time. His depression seemed to be lift the further he got away from his childhood. And he responded to her comment with an eye-roll and slight blush at the back-handed compliment.

"The Demon War had been going for ten years and hopefully it ended yesterday. We had a major intelligence coup a few weeks ago led to the destruction of almost all of his followers. He fled to a crater with the last remaining demons he had in our realm. We thought he was trying to escape to a Demon Universe, probably to regroup and return with reinforcements, but he ended up including a little trap at the end. He cut off my method of retreat after I defeated him at the foot of the portal. I'm not sure if you were paying attention yesterday, but he offered me a choice as he died. I could burn to death in Fiendfyre, or I could take my chances and jump through open portal he made, probably dying at the hands of demons on the other end."

"So, I made my own choice. I changed where the portal was pointed by de-stabilizing it. Just as I was trying to think if there was any other way out of the situation, an explosion occurred, and I got blown right into the portal. Next thing I know, I'm here."

"You skipped over a lot, didn't you?" asked Aayla.

"So did you this morning?" Harry taunted with a half-smile.

"True, but I looked better while doing it," she smirked.

"You were naked at the time," Harry said in exasperation while he blushed nonetheless..

"I win," Aayla said in triumph. She winked at him and then ran into the bathroom to take another shower. Then with a very satisfied grin, she stuck her head back outside the door, to see that he still sat there with his mouth open, "In honor of my victory, I'll expect you to prepare dinner promptly."

She could clearly hear his muffled exclamation of "What?" through the now shut door as she chuckled to herself.

-o0o0o-

"That wasn't funny," a deep blue, almost purple faced Aayla said after she left the bathroom in only a towel almost ten minutes later.

"I'm sorry, I had to use some hot water to clean something," he responded, somehow keeping a grin and his laughter down through the use of Occlumency. "I simply forgot you were in the bathroom."

"Well, remember that tomorrow morning then. We're going running in the morning," the glint in her eye was definitely not friendly as she walked away.

'_At least I kept my eyes forward,_' thought Harry to himself as he watched her close the door. '_Well, watched her ass walk through the door_,' Harry corrected himself. '_Definitely was worth it though_.'

She returned five minutes late. She still half-glared at him while she ate, though he could tell there was no true heat behind it. Dinner was a quiet affair, and Aayla again offered subdued compliments that were probably not as exuberant as they would have been had he not managed to turn her shower water to a degree above freezing.

They both reveled in the normalcy of what they were doing. For these few moments, they could pretend he wasn't an inter-dimensional traveler who was likely to never return home. She could pretend she wasn't a presumed-dead fugitive, betrayed by a government she had protected and defended nearly her entire life. They were two friends who did their best to enjoy a meal together while the lives they both knew burned to ashes.

After dinner they sat talked more. After the abbreviated summaries of their lives, the subtle hints at darker events and experiences that both of them caught reference left them both with the need for some humor to brighten things. Harry brought out his pensieve, and showed her some of the funnier moments of his life. She laughed as the Weasley twins escaped from Hogwarts in his fifth year and then toured their joke shop the following summer. He also showed her some of his fondest moments, such as the first time he saw Hogwarts from his vantage point on the boat in the Black Lake.

She herself had him extract a few memories as well. She showed him the day Master Vos rescued her from a Wampa right after she had been sold as a slave, and then she had Harry watch as Master Tholme made his decision to have her tested to be trained as a Jedi. He later watched as a stoic looking black man proclaimed that Vos had earned the rank of Master while she earned the rank of Knight in Order. While this happened, Master Tholme sat behind them during the ceremony and proudly watched both his former Padawans.

They reminisced about friends long-gone, and where they had eventually hoped their lives would have led had war not intruded upon them. Aayla spoke of her desire to return to her home-world, and offer more Force-sensitive females a chance at a life other than as a slave. Harry spoke of his long-desired dreams to advance his society through the reintroduction of excluded first-gens back into the fold via new industries, which would help bust the old pureblood monopolies on goods and services.

Eventually, they retired to the bedroom to do her first scar removal treatment. He left the room briefly to allow her to disrobe. When he returned, he found her naked on the bed on her stomach. Harry could see how nervous she was about this. It was one thing to know she had been treated magically while unconscious, while it was another to actually be awake for the process. The scar removal treatment mainly involved going over each affected area continuously with a silent spell that encouraged scarred tissue to mimic the healthy skin adjacent to it. Slowly the original scars would shrink as time passed and eventually would disappear forever.

"I can feel you directing the Force, but this feels nothing like Force Healing I've seen others like Barriss do. She was a healer, and I know she directed the Force through those crystals, but that felt much broader than this. This feels more… controlled and directed for lack of better words. I doubt I could guide the Force as precisely as you're doing," commented Aayla quietly at one point.

"I'm sure the crystals, while they were a powerful focus, weren't actually attuned to her. Wands are used to focus magic so that it's easier to perform tasks that don't require a lot of power, or are extremely delicate in nature. It's really situational. Some things require no wand and just a ton of power. Some things take it a step further and require a ton of power and precision. It's for those situations I really had to practice hours and hours a day for years without a wand to get achieve the really fine control necessary to add large amounts of power to the spells.."

"The really unfortunate thing is that I can count on one hand how many wizards in modern times have put forth the effort to achieve what I have. Wandless magic is a dying art form. Once upon a time, maybe 1,500 years ago, every magic user on my planet did everything without a wand. Now you disarm someone, and they feel helpless and don't know what to do without their little stick. My people are a declining civilization, just like your Republic sounds like more and more."

She had no comment for that, simply lost in her own thoughts. Eventually, an hour passed, and Aayla repeated the previous night and produced two more two more memory vials for Harry, this time for Huttesse. He surprised her once again with the reaffirmation of his request to learn a third language, her native tongue of Ryl. She also told him she would gladly give him lessons on how to interpret lekku movements, a rather secretive part of the language few outsiders ever learned or were exposed to.

Harry thanked her profusely and then proceeded to give her first Occlumency lesson, which mainly focused upon recognition of her own internal magic. The first step of Occlumency was not to stand there and be Mind-Raped like Snape did to Harry back in his fifth year of school. It was meditation while a very easy to cast spell was continuously used. He had her follow the flow of magic all the way back to the core of her body, where she eventually lost track of the source of the current. Her goal for now was to try to find that place of origin where her magic came from. The next step to protect her mind would proceed from there once she found her magical core.

-o0o0o-

Eventually Harry retired to bed for the night while Aayla continued her meditation on the floor of the bedroom. After numerous attempts to locate her core, all of them which failed just before the point where she knew she close to something, she stopped to find herself utterly exhausted. Confusion began to set in. She had never felt exhausted before after a meditation, but then again, she had never wielded the Force in such a manner either. Once again, she knew Harry probably had answers for her numerous questions, yet he hadn't told her anything.

She glanced at the intense look of concentration on Harry's face as he lay shirtless in bed in very short undergarments that he referred to as boxers. She took off her clothes, and carefully slid next to him, then stared at the ceiling above. The ability of this tent to show such a scene was beyond her belief. She was well aware that it currently rained outside of the cave at that very moment, but inside the sky was clear. She tried to clear her mind, but instead was focused firmly upon her life-long friends; the stars. She hoped to one day be able to look at the Ry'loth sky from another world in just the same manner. The idea of a small piece of home that travelled with her had great appeal for her.

Her thoughts eventually led her to the conclusion she needed sleep. It would be a long day tomorrow, especially if she was going to drag Harry out on one of her workouts. She draped herself over Harry in almost the same position that he had found her in when they had woken up that morning before she fell asleep.


	5. What is a Jedi

**Summary:**

Harry Potter / Star Wars-over. While leading the final charge against a retreating Dark Lord, Harry is thrown through a Demon Portal, landing on a strange world in a galaxy far away.

**Disclaimer**

I don't own Harry Potter in _any _way. JKR has those rights... Also, Star Wars is owned by Lucasfilm/George Lucas, etc etc.

***Author's Note ***

Inspirations: Sword and Magic by bluminous8

Fluff and randomness. Some have complained the pace is too slow. I want to build a bit here on what they're experiencing, and not just have them bounce off the planet after only a chapter or two stranded there. Neither Harry nor Aayla has their head on straight at the moment, though they're both quite good at faking it. I at least wanted to attempt to explore that a bit, which will continue into the next chapter as well with something that always bothered me about Jedi.

Chapter First Published: 2013-04-29

Chapter Last Update:

**Chapter 5 – What is a Jedi**

For the second day in a row, Harry awoke with a groan. The new languages he received from Aayla were huge in terms of the sheer number of words. But the more he thought about it though, the more it kind of made sense to him. He wondered if it was related to the length of time the language had been in use. Modern English, as he knew it, probably only had true roots going back six or seven hundred years. Galactic Basic and his newest skill, Huttese, probably went back several millennia.

He felt a familiar weight upon his chest and looked down to see Aayla's golden eyes as she stared up at him. Then Harry's mind caught up with the present, and he frowned.

Very mischievous golden eyes.

"Well, now that Mr. Sleepy-Head is awake. We can begin our morning workout," she said in a loud cheerful voice.

"Alright, I guess I deserve it after the water incident. But you hurt me badly out there today and I'll never massage your Lekku again," said Harry with a half smile.

"Oh, now you're just being mean," said Aayla without any worry in her voice as she pushed him out of the bed and covered herself with the blankets. "Go get dressed and I'll meet you outside in ten minutes. Make sure it's something you can run and jump around in."

He obliged his task master and grabbed some workout clothes with a bit of protection on them. One could never be sure when they would be attacked after all. He left the tent to discover that it was just past dawn. '_At least the humidity and heat combination won't kick in too badly for a few hours,_' thought Harry gratefully.

He did his normal set of stretches, though he doubted they would do him much good. His typical workouts were daily, but only allowed for maybe thirty to forty five minutes of running. How in Merlin's name was he going to keep up with Aayla if she was going to drag him along for a multi-hour workout? He hoped that maybe the injuries she had endured would slow her down just a bit, despite how well he knew he had healed them.

Aayla emerged from the tent while he was pondering this. As usual, she was a vision of beauty. Then again, Twi'leks didn't have to worry about trivial things such as bed-head for obvious reasons. She had a bright smile on her face as she looked around and then faced Harry.

"Ok, here's what we're going to do. We're going to run for about an hour, maybe longer. I want you to try to keep up with me. No teleporting. No portkeys. No turning into firebirds."

Harry simply stuck his tongue out at this, "Fine take all the fun out of it."

"Oh, I'll certainly show you some fun. Let's go," and suddenly she was off.

He sped after her and, very quickly, the only thought in his mind was to try to keep up with her. Ever since he first laid eyes upon her as she marched at the head of her column of troops, he knew Aayla was in good physical shape. This however, turned out to be a completely inaccurate description of her state of fitness. In fact, if someone referred to her as in 'good shape', it probably insulted and knocked down her true level of fitness by about four notches.

Right from the get-go, Harry had trouble with her pace. He couldn't figure out what was going on. She seemed to not only intuitively miss branches, roots, and other obstructions, which he almost always blundered into, but her speed completely outstripped him. He watched her slowly put greater and greater distance between the two while the knowledge set in that there wasn't a chance in hell that he would ever catch up to her.

Then she had to go and drive that assumption home with a hammer. He watched as she easily leapt ten meters in the air to the top of a tree flower. He stopped cold when he saw it. Aayla herself turned back to look at him, waved with a cheeky smile on her face, and vaulted from a dead start to the tree flower nearest her, which had to be at least fifteen meters away.

'_How the heck is she jumping so high_?' gaped Harry internally.

He continued to run while he simultaneously fell further and further behind her. Harry eventually was forced to resort to the use of magic to track her progress. He could feel her subtle changes in directions even while she was beyond his range of sight and adjusted accordingly. The necklace she wore thoroughly masked her presence, but there was enough stray magic given off by her that he could roughly estimate her direction. Eventually, he found himself content to let her lead him wherever it was they would ultimately end their run at and Harry simply let himself zone out while he did his best to not collapse from exhaustion.

Finally, after ninety minutes of vaults, trips, stumbles, and falls into the mud, Harry caught up to Aayla. He found her about ten minutes after he felt she had stopped next to a lake. When he found her, he was has dismayed that, other than very light sheen of sweat upon her skin, Aayla showed no sign whatsoever she had run the same distance which had half-exhausted Harry.

"Not too shabby," she said while she leaned against a large rock. "But you didn't even try jumping up onto a tree flower."

Harry tried to ignore the gathered perspiration that glistened prominently between her cleavage, which made her astonishing shade of blue even more attractive as the sheen of wetness reflected lightly in the unrelenting Felucian Sun.. He shook his head to distract him from the sight and responded her statement.

"And why would I need to do that? I've never had a reason to jump that high once in my life, or received training how to do so. If I need to do something like that then I'll apparate. It's quicker, and in the end I'm far less likely to be seen," said Harry in a polite rebuttal. All the while, he made quite sure to look her straight in the eye and not let his gaze wander.

"True, but it wouldn't hurt for you to learn how to Force Jump. I felt you let yourself go about halfway through the run. You released your instincts to the Living Force. I bet the number of trips and falls you had decreased after that."

"Truthfully, I have no idea," responded Harry, a bit boggled at the concepts she just mentioned. "I was mainly focused on tracking you by your magic so I knew I was going in the right direction."

"Well, just watch what I do," she said right before she jumped straight up and landed on top of the flower tree nearest to them.

"Can you do that again, and give me some proper warning next time rather than just leaping when I'm not even fully paying attention yet?" yelled Harry in a rather annoyed fashion after her.

"If I had ever _not_ paid attention to one of my Master's, they would've had me running for the next hour straight, just so you know," Aayla growled at him after she landed on the ground next to him.

"Ah, that explains why you don't have a Padawan then," his statement made her eyebrows rise and fists clench. Then he gave her a lop-sided grin as he continued, "You're obviously not a masochist, and a far better natural teacher. I guess that means that normal Jedi Master's aren't really concerned with their students actually learning anything… unlike you, of course."

She snorted and rolled her eyes, before she simply said, "Just watch properly this time."

Harry switched to his Mage Sight, and watched how her magic reacted. He was pleasantly surprised to see spells shoot out of Aayla's feet at the same time magic in her thighs and calves pulsed as well. It almost appeared as if she had used a wandless banisher combined with some sort of temporary muscle enhancement that went from her legs a good ways up her spine. The only difference between it and a normal spell was, instead of her hands as the focal point, she used the soles of her feet.

"Ok, I get how you did it," he called up to her as she looked down at him. "I'll admit, I've never even pondered sending wandless magic out of the bottom of my feet like you just did. I've just never had the use or need."

He pondered what he had just witnessed for a second, then asked, "Can I see you land? I didn't see what you did last time for that either. I'd personally rather not break my leg. I have a method for cushioning a fall, but I'd rather not use that particular one because it's quite clumsy to use."

With Mage Sight still on, he watched as she gracefully stepped off of the tree flower and fell nearly ten meters. She barely made a sound as she landed softly next to him and continued her gait. She did not even break her stride from where she stepped off the flower. With Mage Sight he could see a burst of magic the instant before impact. Another pulse of magic spread upwards from her leg as well, affecting her legs, spine, neck, skull, and soft tissue of her torso.

'_Most likely fortifying them in some manner to prevent injury from the sudden impact and deceleration_,' he mused as he analyzed what he had just witnessed.

"Ok, I see how you did that as well. I've never seen anyone do either of those things. You strengthened your legs back and neck to prevent injury from the sudden stop. And you also did something at the last moment with your feet to do a focused cushioning effect," he paused as he considered if he could even begin to understand what she just did before he shook his head. "This is going to take some time for me to figure out."

"How could you tell what I was doing exactly?" she asked.

Harry pointed at his eyes, "Mage Sight, I can see Magic when it's active. Spells, wards, plants, animals. If Magic is actively doing something, I can see it if I'm looking for it properly and know in advance to look for it. I don't leave it up all the time though," he said quietly.

"Is that something you can teach me? It sounds similar to Force Perception." she said, very excited at the opportunity to learn another new thing.

"Sure, if you have about the same amount of time to devote to it as you do the animagus transformation you wanted to try," said Harry with a rueful smile.

She pouted quite spectacularly at that, "Years?"

Harry nodded, "Years. And it all starts with that Occlumency training you began last night. Find your Magical Core first. After you do that, tons of other things will open up for you. But your Core is the first step. You _can_ cast simple spells and enchantments like any student without actively feeling your core, but to get into the really advanced stuff you will have to be able to find it."

After a sigh of defeat, she nodded. "I couldn't find it last night. I searched and searched. It was just beyond my sight there in the darkness. I know it was there but I couldn't find it. And then when I finished, it was all I could do just to crawl to the bed. It was exhausting."

Harry had to smile at the memories of his own frustrations. "Just keep at it. What you just described lets me know you're well on your way there," he told her softly. He looked up at the tree and gave his own sigh, "Guess I should try jumping and killing myself, eh?"

Harry tested his assumptions as to how the banisher should work while he fired something similar out of his hands. He had to focus the target and size to a level far smaller than he ever used previously with that particular spell. Once he had it, he tried to imagine doing the same just from his feet. He had to laugh at the thought banishing his own shoes off, but just being conscious of the fact the shoes were there seemed to be enough so that it didn't happen.

A quick glance at Aayla revealed an amused smile on her face as she watched him try and figure it out. He raised an eyebrow towards her as if he had asked, "What?" but she merely shook her head and leaned back against the rock behind her.

Harry had gone over what he thought was needed at least a dozen times and figured now was as good a time any. He spoke out loud, "Ok, 3… 2... 1…" and with a mighty leap he channeled magic through the muscles of his legs and let loose two banishers from his feet.

-o0o0o-

Aayla couldn't believe it

'_His first try… absolutely unbelievable,_' she sighed. At least he did not do it perfectly. If that occurred she wouldn't have known how to respond. Still, a one hundred meter high Force Jump. It was easily double the distance she could do herself when she deliberately pushed her limits, and the accomplishment was genuinely something which to be proud.

Now all she had to do was teach him how to land. She still found herself the victim of periodic involuntary laughter. Harry's whoop of joy at the apex of his ascent, followed immediately by his complete and utter loss of concentration and a rather girlish shriek as he almost became a stain on the muddy ground.

Luckily, Aayla _had_ paid attention and she slowed him down enough with the Force where Harry had used his own Force abilities in some utterly bizarre manner which turned the ground into a squishy cushion that made him bounce comically upon impact.

They continued to practice jumps for the next half hour, until slowly but surely Harry could control his vertical jumps to the point where they no longer resembled ballistic missile take offs. His landings took nearly as long, as he just couldn't quite stick a landing properly. But eventually, Harry learned in two hours what had taken her many long and painful weeks as a teenaged Padawan all those years ago.

'_But then again, I wonder how long he took for some of his early abilities and how long I'll take to learn them now that I'm in my early thirties,_' she pondered.

She ended her thoughts upon teacher and student differences and turned to her exhausted exercise partner, "Think you can handle running back now?"

He looked at her incredulously, but nodded slowly in acceptance of it after a long exhale. That definitely made her happy. Harry, despite being exhausted, would still try and push himself. She had already turned away when he heard him say, "Alright I'll give it a try."

"No," she turned to him, and suddenly her own lessons from her youth rang in her ears. "You either do it, or you don't. There is no in between with a '_try_,'" she told him emphatically.

She saw him pull up short, startled at the heat in her voice, which even surprised herself if she was honest. The memories of Master Vos and how hard he pushed her through her doubts seemed to be at the forefront of her mind as she spoke. Her recollections were cut short when he spoiled the serious mood when he said, "Uh, sure. I'll do it. Tally-Ho! Hoo-Rah!" and ran in the direction of the cave.

'_At least he knows or can sense what direction we came from…'_ Aayla thought with amusement. '…a_nd doesn't take offense to the light scolding of Jedi beliefs from an instructor.'_ She did not believe she had earned the right yet to call herself a Master. That was something only the Council could bestow upon someone, even if she found her confidence in the Council shaken in recent years.

This time she saw him take the initiative and vault into the tree flowers first. His leaps still needed polish, as he over or under shot his target on occasion, but his ability to vault over obstacles had now greatly increased over this morning. His ability to use the Force to maintain his run speed also seemed to increase, as he no longer breathed as heavily as did on the initial run out.

They easily made it back to the cave in probably half the time it took for them to do their initial run. Aayla had overtaken him a few times on the run, and Harry had taken it as a challenge and taken the lead back. She ultimately easily beat him to the entrance, but she was no less happy with his display of abilities, both physical and with the Force.

"You did well Harry," she told him honestly with a smile.

"Thanks, I enjoyed that second run a lot more than the first," he said while he breathed heavily. He took his shirt off, which exposed his well-muscled chest to the unforgiving sun. She held in her gasp as she noticed far more scars on his body than should have been allowed on any sentient being. The dark light of the bedroom in the tent had blurred the scars from her vision, but they were on vivid display now in the bright sunlight. She almost missed him wave his hand over himself twice as he once again used the Force in some obscure manner.

"What did you just do to yourself?" asked Aayla curiously, trying desperately to avoid looking at the shirtless human's chest and visible abs now that she had put the scars out of her mind.

"It was a cooling charm, and then I cast a spell to hopefully prevent me from getting a sunburn," as he conjured two glasses in mid air, filled them with water while they floated, and then grabbed one while the other drifted into her grip.

"Thanks," tipping her glass in acknowledgement. "When can you start teaching me some stuff like this?"

"I'd prefer you learn to find your Magical Core first. It just makes things that much quicker and easier. Once you've done that, we can decide which direction to take you in next. There's so many potential things to teach you, even I have things specific things I've put off learning that I can devote years to understanding. Though, how I'll learn some of them without my full library back home is a question I can't answer anymore…"

She watched as he fell into silence again at another reminder of just how much he had lost. It was times like this she felt quite helpless. Harry always bounced back quickly, but the constant reminders of a past he would never be able to recreate here took a quiet toll upon him which she could not provide protection from.

"I'll have to remember to start putting together a list of spells. See if I can't remember all the lessons from school," she heard Harry say more to him than to her. Then he looked up.

"Later on today, I want to start gathering wand materials. Maybe we can find something suitable to you that will help you learn a bit quicker. Using a focus for spell casting is much easier than doing it without one. If we run across some predators, we can take them down for food, materials for wands, and if there's any useable leather, make you a wand holster. All the wildlife here seems just drenched in magic. Any of it would likely be useful in wands."

She thought it all over. She was not sure what their daily routine would be for the next two to three days as they lay low before their transportation off world could be built, but his suggestions sounded like excellent ideas to distract themselves from the boredom they would likely encounter. "Great, now how about you cook me a late breakfast while I shower?"

She internally laughed at his look of annoyance at the assignment of cooking duties. "Great, thanks," she smiled widely and immediately ran inside before he could even utter a response.

"I hope we don't run out of warm water," she heard him yell as she entered the tent.

-o0o0o-

Lunch was a subdued affair, as Harry was still quite visibly tired and sore from their run, which caused him to make a meal that involved as little effort as possible. It was simple sandwiches and some odd-tasting juice from a vegetable he called a pumpkin. However bland it was to her, it was still better than field rations. Aayla thought it would be a long time before she willingly subjected herself to the tasteless food found in the endless pallets they had acquired for emergency sustenance. Apparently, Harry had eaten his own planet's version of field rations, and from the looks he gave when she suggested their consumption, she assumed they tasted as bad as Republic rations.

She had initially tried to meditate while he showered, but instead attempted to find her core again. The elusiveness of what she sought aggravated her to no end. Harry eventually returned and picked up on her state of agitation immediately.

"You have to relax," he said as he sat down next to her. "You can't push or brute force your way through. It has to just happen. There are very few rules around this sort of thing, but those are among them."

She gave him an annoyed look and jumped a little as he moved behind her and massaged her shoulders. "Try again. Don't anticipate finding anything. Just follow your magic, immerse yourself in it. Don't try guessing what you'll see or find next. Just travel the path however long it is. Be patient and don't give up."

His touch relaxed her frustrated mind and she sank back a bit into him while his hands switched to rubdown her Lekku. With his hands directly upon her skin, she felt his emotions, which were currently gratitude aimed towards her and the desire to help her. She allowed these positive emotions to flow over her and she dove into her meditations again as she followed the thin stream of Force that had raised the very small pebble in front of her.

The speed she traced the path of the Force inside her was far slower now than when she raced along it the previous night. The time and effort she applied was also more involved. Bit by bit, she traced it back, with no expectations of what she would find. She merely reveled in its feel and followed its course.

Time soon lost all connotations for her. She continued along the path the Force laid out in front of her, being concerned neither with what was behind her nor with any anticipation of what was to come. She simply followed…

…and suddenly, there it was.

She reared back at the suddenness of its appearance. Her mind was so startled in fact that she immediately fell out of her mediation and her body literally jumped.

For one brief instant though had basked in what she found inside her. It was warm, white, and pure. Its sudden appearance had overwhelmed her mind's senses after she had progressed for so long in virtual darkness, only the faint path of the Force for a guide.

"You found it, didn't you," said Harry from behind her.

Aayla was about to respond when a wave of nausea rolled over her. Her stomach contorted and she almost lost her lunch right then and there. A brief flash of the Force occurred which she was barely cognizant of. There was a clunk upon the ground in front of her and when she barely opened her eyes, she saw a bucket placed in front of her.

"Breath, just breath in and out," said his calm voice. "You were in there for nearly three hours."

She felt one of his hands rubbing her back while he sat alongside facing her. The twisting, uncomfortable feeling in her stomach, chest and throat would not leave her, and she gave an appreciative smile as she felt him lightly hold her lekku behind her in case she threw up.

"Normally the Human's friend pulls the other Human's hair back as they throw up. I figured you wouldn't want Tchin and Tchun here sullied by the remains of my bland Earth food," he told her with clear amusement in his voice as he joked about how she had earlier described his sandwiches.

A conjured glass of cool water was placed in her hand, and she slowly sipped at it. It definitely calmed her stomachs as they thrashed around. The exhaustion she felt initially overwhelmed her, but it slowly improved to an almost tolerable state as she calmed down.

"You're magically exhausted. It'll take a bit to build your reserves back up again. You definitely took your time reaching your core, but you got there in the end. Eventually, you'll be able to find and then call upon it near instantaneously. That will take some practice though."

She nodded and tried her hardest to pay attention to what he said despite the way her head wanted to spin. Hopefully what he said was true, because she couldn't imagine that nauseous state as a requirement every time she found the Force within herself it in the future.

She suddenly felt something lift up her hand and place an object within it. Her eyes opened once again and saw a glass vial of grayish, dirty water.

"Drink this," Harry said. "This will probably be the only time you ever get one of these. It's called Pepper-Up. You take it when you're exhausted to get a short term boost for your magic. However, in about six hours you're going to crash rather magnificently, which fortunately will place us right about at the time we'll be heading to bed anyways."

Taking the small vial in hand, she downed it without question. Only afterwards did she realize her action meant that she subconsciously trusted Harry implicitly. She was about to look up and smile at him when she suddenly felt a rush of energy and steam erupted from around her ears.

Her eyes widened in shock and asked, "Did that really just happen?"

After a bark of laughter Harry said, "You bet it did. Wizard stuff has all sorts of ridiculous side-effects like that. We even have a drink that makes you belch fire. So, yes, you really did just have steam coming out of your ears. You kind of just get used to the insanity of it to be honest."

She watched as Harry stood up, and offered her a hand to help her stand on her shaky legs. "We should get a snack if you can handle it, and then head out again. I want to get some materials for wands while we have some downtime. Then we can come back. We can have some dinner, I'll get your memories so I can learn Ryl tonight, and you'll go straight to bed. Sound good?"

She nodded, too frazzled to put up an argument against his plan. To be honest, she felt a bit jealous, but knew in the back of her mind she should not be. Harry had learned things on the fly faster than anyone she had ever seen earlier that day, and even was able to race her back and put up some serious competition. But the moment she attempted one of his lessons, she nearly exhausted herself.

And like usual, he immediately seemed to pick up the problem behind her thoughts. "You're doing great. What you just did in two practice sessions usually takes weeks or months for some wizards. It took me about three weeks of pushing myself nearly to the point of going comatose to initially learn how to do that properly when I was eighteen. You've got a lot of power and natural aptitude for what I can teach you. All you need to do is be patient and take things one lesson at a time."

She nodded, and mumbled "Thanks" to him.

It was a lot to take in. She could barely imagine or believe that a whole branch of Force studies that had hitherto been undiscovered and untapped by the Jedi Order was being taught to her and her alone.

"Of course," drawled Harry loudly, and she could just feel him shift into his usual form of sarcastic banter. "I plan on finishing all you can teach me by the end of the week."

"Is that so?" she asked with a quick of an eye, while she simultaneously pulled out her lightsaber and ignited it. The usual low sub-audible thrum of its blade upon the air quickly filled the space of the tent to a volume that overwhelmed their ears. "You feel you'll best me in a lightsaber spar that quickly?"

Her reward was the speed his face paled and the concurrent manner that his eyes widened as his head shook like a small child's in denial of her words.

"Now, let's not be too hasty," he said while he slowly backed away. "I obviously wasn't referring to learning your style of sword fighting. I know that will take a few years."

"Are you sure?" she said while she got another idea. She summoned the second lightsaber strapped inside the hidden pocket of her right leg and ignited it as well. She crouched down low in one of the opening stances stance of the dual-lightsaber form of Jar'Kai.

She almost laughed and ruined the effect when she saw his eyes widen even further and a wand suddenly appear in his hand. With the knowledge she had thoroughly won this round, she shut down her lightsabers, walked over, and pat him on the shoulders. "Just for that comment, you're cooking every meal until we leave this miserable little planet," she said cheerfully.

The outward groan she heard was all the reward she could possibly want.

-o0o0o-

"So what exactly are we looking for?" he heard Aayla ask from a few feet behind him.

"Almost anything to be honest," Harry responded calmly while he looked over a particularly large flower tree.

"Wands are a magical focus made from wood from trees, with a core of something from a magical animal. Normally cores would be anything from tail hairs from mammals, feathers from birds like my animagus form, or the heart strings of massive powerful magical predators."

A particular group of trees caught his eye and he stopped in front of them.

"I'd like to cut one or two of these trees down, and store the wood in one of my trunks. We'll get some samples of other plant life here as well. Especially the seeds in case we decide to grow these plants ourselves wherever we end up."

He stopped as the words left his mouth. That particular thought had plagued him a bit at the back of his mind, and now seemed as good an opportunity as any. "When we do get off this planet, where will we go?"

Aayla looked him initially, then let her eyes wander past to the horizon. "I've been trying to think of possible places to go. The problem is… we don't have any information right now. And I really would like to avoid opening a Republic Military datapad right now on a planet that's supposed to be abandoned."

"My first inclination would be to head to Alderaan. Their Senator, Bail Organa, has always been a good ally of the Jedi. He's married to their planet's Queen, and is a very influential member of society, both within his sector and throughout the galaxy. He may be able to find a place to shelter us on his world, or know of a place where we could hide elsewhere. I've worked with him a few times. Even if Alderaan has publicly taken a stance to save itself politically, Bail will more than likely provide quiet help us if he can as long as we're discrete."

"Ok, that's Plan 1. What's Plan 2?" said Harry. She saw her look at him quizzically, so he elaborated. "What do we do if we show up at Alderaan and there's a bajillion clones already there? Where do we go instead? We need multiple things to fall back on, because like you said, we have no idea what's going on out there. Plus one of these Plan 2's may be better than Plan 1."

Nodding, he could tell she started to think out loud as she pulled feathers from the large avian they had just killed, "Well, we both know Huttese, and with that I think we could disappear into any of the criminal worlds or societies to hide quiet easily for a while. You might need to learn a few secondary skills like star drive operation or repair, but that's easily manageable. We could probably hire ourselves out as mercenaries or bounty hunters easily enough as well. Or… I could pose as your slave if we got really desperate. I'd would need to teach you all the normal protocols and behaviors regarding slave ownership before we attempt that."

"Those aren't a bad group of ideas," he said neutrally. He wanted to explore her first idea further and wanted nothing to do with the last. An education on slave ownership was not something he wanted to touch with a ten-foot pole. "Are there any other allies of the Jedi or enemies of the Chancellor from this Senate you mentioned that we could possibly go through?"

"The largest faction against the Chancellor within the Senate was led by a Chandrillan Senator named Mon Mothma. She had the distinction also of being the youngest Senator ever elected to the Galactic Senate, so she is rather well known. There are over two thousand sector representatives in the Senate, so to be well-known by itself means she wields a considerable amount of influence in the Galaxy."

"Anyone else we could approach?"

"Corellia is a core world system that has been openly opposed to the Clone War and the Chancellor since the War started. Their Senator, another human named Garm Bel Iblis, is a hero to their people, and has defied the Chancellor on numerous occasions. Corellians are famous for having some of the best technology and weapons development due to the number of spacers and smugglers that originate in the system. Smugglers often come up with just as many technological developments to star drives, ship hulls, and weapon systems as the massive intergalactic shipyards and development corporations do. And… almost all of the designers from both sides come from Corellia."

"So any of the places and people you've just mentioned would be good options for us," Harry said, a bit happier to have a bare bones idea of what to do once they were off-world.

"Great, that gives us three solid potential allies to approach as options. It gives us a few vague ideas of where we could hide and wait things out for a while as well. And don't forget the final option you have not mentioned, as distasteful as it may sound. We may ultimately need to just find somewhere remote and hide semi-permanently. Sounds cowardly, but we do no one any good if we get caught and killed. Regardless of what we do, we need to keep a low profile so this last option always remains viable. If someone discovers you're alive and goes public with it, it could lead us to a lot of problems."

He saw her screw her nose up; her dislike of that last suggestion immediately apparent. But she also didn't object out loud to it, which meant the wisdom of such a last ditch option was understood.

"Just remember they're all just options and ideas, Aayla. Nothing is decided now. It's good to just throw everything on the table now, even the stuff that we aren't likely to go with."

Harry returned to the tree flower now that the bird had been rendered and asked Aayla to cut it down with her lightsaber. She quickly and skillfully chopped the trunk into two foot sections. He began explaining the little bit of wand lore and craft knowledge he knew. They couldn't use direct Magic of any kind on any of the pieces they collected. All of these components could never have magic channeled through them until they were encased and sealed in the finished product. To do so beforehand would taint the components with their own magic and they would be less compatible to anyone else who wanted to use them.

They rigged a fairly complicated system that utilized two specific marked pieces of cut flower trunk to pick up and move all the other pieces into the trunk and stack them. They cut down four flower trees and processed the components in the same manner. Harry described how it was also important to try different aged components, so they cut down an older, taller flower tree to go along with the relatively short one they had cut down first.

They also processed other components, that sometime in the far future, they could experiment with for their use in potions. For every plant they saw, Harry took samples and made sure everything was properly labeled. Aayla assured him that each species was well-documented on datapads back in the tent already, so there would be no need to take pictures for the documentation he wanted. When seeds were found, they were placed immediately under stasis, stored and labeled as well.

The most interesting experience was when Harry deliberately coaxed a few plants called Yerdura Poison-Spitters to safely unload a very large amount of poison into crystal tankards. All were later cut down and rendered into component parts and stored as well. The various things that Harry tended to want to grab from plants were far from what Aayla had expected him to grab, such as roots and magically created dew on the leaves of plants. Aayla did manage to convince him not to activate a massive Spore Plant after she reiterated she had seen them take down an entire clone company that had stupidly gotten too close to them.

Then they turned exclusively to the wildlife. He explained that, while he had heard of instances of non-animal components used in wand cores, it didn't seem to occur often. Magical animals almost always had very specific components that could be used to channel magic though. And besides, it would give them additional food supplies they could store back in the tent.

They eventually rendered down at least one of every animal they found. Avian species such as rippers and manta rays were easy to pull down out of the sky with summoning charms. He noticed Aayla was distinctly less pleased to see the half-slug and half-bug like gelagrubs serve as a target for his collection. She had said they served as transportation and were completely harmless creatures.

Harry sensed the collection of live animal components had begun to annoy Aayla, so he gave in to her not-too-subtle hints that they had collected enough for the day. They were packing up and making sure nothing would go to waste at the site of their last kill, when Harry and Aayla both stilled.

The Force suddenly screamed danger at both of them. They looked at each other and then began to search around frantically, through neither saw anything on approach. They quickly continued to pack their belongings into the trunk and neatness no longer slowed their efforts.

Then came the roar.

"What the hell was that?" asked Harry, eyes wide and as he searched the sky. The roar had been so similar to a dragon's that the direction he looked was purely instinctual. He thoroughly expected to see a a winged serpent swoop down upon them.

"Sounds like a rancor. Whatever moron imported Acklays to the planet is believed to have brought them as well," said Aayla, who hadn't looked up, but merely hurried her pace as she gathered the tools spread across the ground.

"I take it they're not friendly creatures?" asked Harry as the two grabbed the last two cutting tools upon the ground and sealed his trunk.

"No, very few can be domesticated. Normally they're mindless killing machines. They can grow up to ten meters tall and could swallow both of us in one bite," Aayla said as he summoned the now sealed trunk back into his wand holster.

"So I take it we should-" Harry's thoughts of an abrupt departure were interrupted as two flower trees were knocked over and a rancor appeared on the far edge of the clearing they stood in.

It was easily ten meters tall. Brown, ugly, and with arms that seemed twice as long as they should have been in comparison to the body they were attached. All of its fangs protruded outwards from its mouth, giving it the impression of being somehow related to a Venus Fly Trap from Earth crossed with a lumpy potato.

Harry doubted the thing had ever even pondered eating a plant in its life. It was pure predator, and right now, it stared at Aayla and Harry from fifty meters away as if they were its next meal. A quick glance at it with Mage-Sight revealed that while not overly powerful, there definitely was a fair amount of magic that flowed through the oversized creature.

"Shall we take it down, or do we retreat back to the tent?" asked Harry as he grabbed her hand in case they needed to quickly apparate away. He wasn't scared at all of the thing. After he once faced down a Demon Destroyer that was two hundred meters tall during the war with only a handful of folks as backup, it tended to make him unafraid of smaller animals such as this.

"I don't think we should take it on. They've killed Jedi in the past on other worlds when enraged. They can be very hard to kill. Their hides are resistant to most forms of blaster fire. I could use my lightsaber on it, but it would require getting very close, which I would rather avoid," said Aayla quickly. She didn't show outward signs of fear, but she clearly desired to be anywhere else but that clearing at the moment.

"Give me a minute with the thing. Use your portkey back to the tent if you need to. I won't put myself in too much danger," said Harry.

He didn't wait for an acknowledgment. Harry pulled out a wand and cast a _Bombarda_ at the ground in front of him. The explosion of mud and debris that was thrown into the air instantly transfigured into a huge flock of crows which flew straight into the face of the rancor. The beast no longer even looked at Harry and Aayla and was completely focused and roared at the swarm of birds that pecked at its face. The creature's somewhat slow moving oversized arms served no help at all as it attempted to brush away the birds that simply flew around its hands.

Another _Bombarda_ to another side produced more debris, which quickly became a pride of lions. The pack charged the rancor as well and leapt upon its legs; bites and claws close behind. The transfigured cats inflicted no real damage to the rancor, but merely caused it irritation like the birds. The mouth of the rancor was now constantly open in an almost non-stop roar of rage which had begun to hurt Harry's ears.

Which was the point of the entire exercise.

The whole process was a text-book execution of an attack chain that he had developed for taking down mid-sized to moderately large demons. It was patterned after the complete stroke of luck he had as a twelve year old in the Chamber of Secrets under Hogwarts.

Just like the basilisk, he couldn't really count on any magical attack that could penetrate through the hide of the rancor that wasn't a full-fledged siege spell. He could use the spell to end the fight quickly, but that wouldn't leave anything salvageable of the body when done. What he needed to do was attack the one true weak point of a heavily armored animal. It was the same weak point that also screamed in rage at the irritants that swarmed around it.

Two overpowered cutting curses brought down a nearby flower tree. Some decently powerful transfiguration had the trunk changed from the wood-like material it originally was into a metal spike that was three meters long. '_Hello first year transfiguration… Match stick into a needle._'

As the make-shift spear rose slowly into the air with a levitation charm, Harry let off one high-powered noise burst from his wand, very similar decibel-wise to a stick of dynamite going off. It got the rancor's attention and it responded just as Harry hoped it would with another roar that held both defiance and challenge.

The last sound it would ever make.

In under a second, the spear traversed the clearing and flew up at a forty-five degree angle into the rancor's mouth and abruptly came out the back of its head. The beast stood there, stunned at what had happened for one full second, before its legs gave way and it crashed into the ground. The transfigured lions and crows were gone with two more waves of his wand, which left the area eerily quiet as all the local wildlife had long since fled the noise of the enraged predator.

-o0o0o-

Aayla had stood through the entire 'battle' and watched with her mouth half-open. She was vaguely uncomfortable with attacking the beast, as it had not yet attacked them yet and they had the means to flee. However, she definitely understood the rancor would attack within moments unless they fled the area.

She had previously seen Harry do transfiguration as he demonstrated his skills in the tent. At that point, he had changed small inanimate objects into small cute and cuddly animals he called Chihuahuas. What he had just done against the rancor was nothing like those small-scale whims of fancy. It was dangerous, lethal, and planned. She could tell each spell and attack he made upon the rancor lead towards something.

When the spear pierced the soft palette of its mouth, Aayla could easily admit she was impressed with the execution of the attack. At no point was Harry or she in any danger. Her own abilities would have been hard pressed to take down the beast herself without risk to life and limb in the process.

"So… you're going to take care of this guy by yourself, right?" she said after a few moments silence. Her voice deliberately contained the barely hidden message that she did not desire in any way shape or form to participate in the rendering of a beast of this size.

Harry chuckled at her antics, "No, you don't have to help with this one if you don't want to. I'm mainly concerned with getting its blood, its heart and liver, a few of its bones and teeth, and maybe a sample of its hide if it's as resistant to blaster fire as you say it is. I know of some spells to make dragon's hide somewhat flexible for armor, and I'm curious if I can apply it here as well. Maybe I can make us some full suits of armor to wear."

"Thanks, I'm really not at all interested in cutting that thing open or being around its corpse for any length of time," she responded.

"Could I borrow your spare lightsaber then? You can portkey back to the cave, shower and rest. I think I can speed this along fairly well since I'm not interested in the whole beast. Is the meat edible at all from it?"

"No its not," she said while she tossed him the spare weapon. "It's mildly poisonous in fact. I'm not aware of it having any real uses."

"Alright then, I'll save a bit just to have it on hand in case we can use it for potions. Poisonous things can be useful for a lot of curative draughts. Go ahead and portkey back. I'll follow in a little while. I'll apparate back the moment I think I'm in any danger out here."

"You better. I've put too much work already into teaching you to be civilized to lose you now," Aayla smirked while she reached for the second necklace she now wore that was her portkey back to the tent. She saw Harry about to say something in response so she said, "Activate" and found herself spinning and suddenly in front of the tent.

'_He's too easy to wind up_,' thought Aayla.

She walked inside and immediately went to the bedroom. She casually flung her filthy clothes into a pile in the corner with the rest of the laundry. Aayla pondered the pile for a few moments, '_I guess I could take care of those later since he's been doing all the cooking.' _ She walked into the bathroom, and decided it was time for her to test out the bath.

After she filled and slipped inside the tub, she thought it was truly a gift from the Force. The very hot water was just what she needed after the past few stressful weeks. The poisoning of this planet represented such a huge political nightmare that resources had been scrambled almost overnight to attempt to stop it. She felt like she had been running non-stop since her orders went out to come to this world. Then the galaxy found itself turned on its head and her destiny intersected with a wizard who used magic to save her life.

She reviewed the past few days with Harry and his outlook on things for what must have been the tenth time. He never stopped at the obvious. He always pushed just a few more times and made their ideas a bit more solid. Whether it was acquisition of a bit more food and supplies that they probably didn't need when they raided the clone base, the impromptu way they planned their alternative travel options once off the planet, or the slow methodical way he shot down every argument she had against the need to use blasters because they would give away her status of being a Jedi. All of these details, which he quickly thought of right away, were things she likely would've thought of long after the fact.

She allowed her body to fall a little deeper into the water of the bath and tipped her head back so just her face was above the surface of the water. The rancor fight weighed heavily upon her mind. She remembered the complete lack of fear she felt from Harry as he held her hand while he took down a full grown bull rancor from a distance of fifty meters with one hand. The power she felt from him was unreal, but he didn't truly use any of it. The only time she felt him use any significant amount of what she felt he was truly capable of is when he exploded the dirt on the ground and transfigured the tree trunk, neither of which were direct attacks on the rancor itself.

An hour later, she was completely unaware to the passage of time as she soaked in the tub. She was so focused upon coming to grips with the idea that so many of her fellows could be dead, when a noise from the other room could be heard as it echoed under the water. She lifted her head slightly up to see the door partially open, "Aayla, are you in here?"

"I'm in the bath, Harry. Do you need me for something?"

"Nope, was just checking to see where you were and that I didn't blunder in if you were already here. I'll take my shower when you're done."

"Oh no, there won't be any of that nonsense. Get your butt in here right now," she said without any hesitation. The idea that she would be worried about him seeing her nude seemed a bit laughable after she knew that he had healed her entire back from such devastating injuries.

Harry appeared at the door to the bathroom, took one look and instantly turned away as he blushed furiously.

"You go take your shower, it's not like I can see you around the corner anyways when you're in there. Then hop on in here and enjoy the bath with me while it's still warm," she told him in her best impression of how Master Tholme would scold and order her around as a Padawan. The fact that she enjoyed making such a seriously powerful individual blush like a hormonal teenager was definitely fun as well.

She closed her eyes and relaxed again. Five minutes later, she felt a disturbance in the air, opened her eyes, and caught just a glimpse of all Harry's well-toned naked body as he slipped into the bath across from her. She felt a flash of the Force and the water temperature instantly returned to the very warm temperature it had been at the start of her bath.

"That's a handy trick. I can't wait to learn how you do some of these things," Aayla commented to him as she saw him relax under the water in an imitation of her.

"It's mainly about intent and the visualization of the end result you want," he said. "Well… that's oversimplifying it greatly, but those two things are the most important concepts for any Mage to know."

Her butt had begun to fall asleep at the odd angle she relaxed in the water at, so she shifted a bit. She felt her thigh brush against his under the water, which instantly opened up his emotions to her. He was definitely tired and worn out. The distant ache of sadness she felt him occasionally fall into was there, but now it was overshadowed by confusion over something. She wondered what bothered her wizard savior.

"Can you tell me what your training was like," Harry suddenly asked. "I understand the endurance running where you use Magic to enhance your abilities, but what else is there? I've seen you do some levitation stuff, and I'm sure your lightsaber fighting is influenced by this precognitive seer thing that we all seem to have, but what else?"

She had to think about it for a bit. Of course there was more to the life Jedi than interaction with the Force. "There's a lot we do and are required to learn. Quite a bit is mental discipline. Outside of that, there are two branches of Jedi. Guardians and Consulars. I'm a Guardian. We're the warriors, weapon masters, and tacticians. Consulars are often diplomats, healers, philosophers, and researchers. But that's not to say they aren't excellent warriors as well. They just focus their efforts and free time upon the fields of their choice. There's also a lot of education about the politics of certain key cultures around the galaxy. Treaty negotiation and understanding how various economic blocks and associations interact is also a large part."

"What about your interactions with Mag-, err 'the Force'?" asked Harry. She had to smile at his attempt to use her terminology.

"Why are you asking?" she was curious about his line of thought, and figured she would be able to help if she knew why his thought process had led to the confusion that he felt.

"I'm curious about what things you can do that I've never put thought towards. Then I thought I would try and identify all the subjects from my planet Wizards learn about and take for granted, which the Jedi never seem to have delved into or researched."

"Like… I've seen you summon things, banish things, levitate things. The ability to see the future and past is called Divination in my world. It's actually quite rare. It's the same sort of thing that relates to prophecies and stuff like that. I've never had any dispensation towards it whatsoever. Which is why I've been so uncomfortable with this whole 'trust the Force' thing. I'm not used to having something influence my mind at all. And to be truthful, prophecies have brought nothing but pain to my life."

Aayla had to think. Everything he had listed were basic Force powers that all Padawan's were taught and honed. What else was there?

"Well, you've learned how to Force Jump pretty easily. We have something called Force Sight. It's very advanced and allows you to see through walls and such. I cannot do it, and most Jedi who learn it do so out of necessity as many of them have been blinded. There's Force Cloak, which doesn't make you invisible, but it makes people not see you in public places. Master Vos taught me how to use it."

"It sounds like a Notice-Me-Not charm. There are two versions of it, one for non-magicals and one for wizards. Can you do both? Or are they one and the same for you?" asked Harry. He seemed genuinely excited about her answer. She could tell he hoped there was an overlap to their abilities. Something to make sure he wasn't entirely unique in the universe.

Aayla had to think about the ability and all the times she had ever used it. She could not ever remember another Jedi fooled by its use, even her Master when he instructed her. In fact, she specifically remembered that she once stood and conversed with Master Vos against shadowy walls in the slums of Nar Shadda while its denizens passed by completely unaware of their presence.

"I don't think it works on other Jedi. I've had whole conversations with my Master when both of us were under the Cloak. We could always see each other."

"You can sense when I cast spells right?" Harry asked her, and she nodded. "Does your cloak feel like this?"

With that statement, a wash of Force emanated from Harry and affected the bathtub. It felt exactly like Force Cloaking, but much more powerful. "Yes, that's exactly how it feels," nodded Aayla in excitement. "What about the other-"

But before she could finish asking her question, another slightly different wash of Force permeated the room, and she lost all sight of Harry. "Oh that one has potential," Aayla said aloud. "This could really help us against the Sith if you could teach it to others."

"Why would I want to do that?" said a voice suddenly in her left ear as she felt nimble fingers lightly dig into her lower left side ribs. She shrieked with uncontrolled laughter as he invisibly tickled her. Finally she felt a burst of Force that felt like it cleansed the area, and Harry suddenly appeared next to her as he chuckled merrily.

"That wasn't funny," she said after she splashed him.

"Oh and that's why the smile is still on your face?" replied the very self-satisfied wizard.

"I'll get you," she said in defeat, "Just you wait and see."

"Did I win this exchange?" Harry said with a bright smile on his face as he settled in next to her and lowered himself down into the water once again. "I believe I did in fact just triumph over evil."

"Evil?" she asked with a mischievous smirk while she allowed herself to sink down a bit as well, but rested her head on his shoulder. She felt the familiar flood of emotions as their shoulders touched. He was happy, happier than she had felt him before.

"Nothing," Harry said quickly as he backtracked from his words.

"Oh no, you're going to dig yourself out of the hole you just dug, Potter."

"Oi! So I'm Potter now, Secura?" he asked, but there was definitely no heat in his voice.

She could sense amusement with the situation rising, but there was something else there too. It was directed towards her, but it was definitely buried deep. What could it be?

"You alright?" he asked. She glanced at him, the smile on his face had nearly faded and he had an eyebrow quirked in concern.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just a bit tired," she responded evasively as she tried to deflect his interest away from her thoughts on his emotions.

"Well, it's starting to get a bit late. We should probably get your healing session done for the night before you crash from the Pepper-Up. If I could get your language memories of Ryl before you go to sleep that would be awesome too." Harry sat up and moved away from her, which once again cut off the contact she had with him that relayed his emotions to her.

"Ok," she wanted to get up, but found she had not moved. It really disturbed her how much she missed the ability to sense other's emotions. Harry didn't lust after her like all the beings she often encountered while on undercover missions, or her own clone troopers did when they thought they were discrete as they covertly undressed her with their eyes while under their fully body armor. Harry didn't overtly do any of those things and she really liked that, but she missed that sense of companionship she would lose whenever their skin contact ended.

'_Was that what he was feeling towards me as well?'_ thought Aayla. Suddenly she felt the need the leave. Emotions like this were frowned upon by the Jedi because of where they could lead. She stood up suddenly and got out of the tub, completely oblivious to her nudity and got a towel from the linen closet next to the tub. She turned back to Harry to speak to him, only to see he had averted his eyes away from her.

"Oops," said Aayla in embarrassment.

"You really know how to pull out the big guns whenever you want to win a verbal exchange don't you?" She saw him pale suddenly and go completely red with a blush, "Er, no pun intended."

She had to laugh at his terror at the misinterpretation of his words. "My apologies, I suddenly had a lot on my mind and I forgot my lack of apparel. But… it's nice to know you appreciate my _guns_." She immediately vacated the room to avoid him seeing her own blush. Her reward however was at least the now familiar groan of frustration from behind her as Harry again was left unable to respond to her as she retreated away.

She dried herself off in the bedroom and lay down upon the bed, fully aware Harry would be out soon to do the nightly healing session on her back. She was greatly looking forward to it. The sense of calm that would wash over her while he channeled subtle tendrils of the Force into her back provided a relaxing experiences unlike any she had ever had.

But when Harry did finally arrive from the bathroom, it was strange. He deliberately avoided all contact with her, and she wondered why he did so. The previous night there were plenty of glances of his hands upon her back as he waved his wand over her back and performed some kind of motion with his other hand.

After forty-five minutes the session was over, and Harry quietly asked for her memories of Ryl. She put on her night robe and quickly stepped to the desk in the corner, where she again followed his instructions and produced the shimmering thread of 'memory' for him after roughly fifteen minutes of effort.

He wished her a good night, disrobed, and lay down in their bed. Aayla watched as he began the now familiar process to absorb her memories of her native language. All the while, his face grimaced in what she now knew as an expression of pain as the strand slowly disappeared into his forehead. As the second strand vanished, Harry's hands again went limp from his abrupt switch to unconsciousness.

She walked over and picked up his wand and the vial he had dropped on the ground, which she placed upon the nearby nightstand. Then, in what would cause her old Master's heads to shake due to her impulsiveness, she picked up the wand. She tried to remember what this particular wand was made of. He had described the wood, core, and history of each of his wands to her, but at this point it all seemed a blur to her.

When she looked at the wand in more detail, she felt a very subtle inner warmth that emanated from the stick. Then, she suddenly realized that this was the equivalent of her lightsaber, and she could do some unintentional harm while she played with it, so she quickly placed it back upon the nightstand.

It had been a long day, and she thought she could begin to feel the beginnings of the 'crash' Harry had warned her about. As she slipped out of her robe and got into bed, she realized Harry was on the near side this time, with the largest gap now on the far side against the wall. As she crawled over him to reach the other side, she felt the full skin to skin contact of her chest against his, and knew that her own feelings had begun to approach dangerous waters in regards to her new friend.

The Jedi rejected all attachment, and did not allow for romantic relationships. But it had been that way for only the last thousand years, and she had began to wonder again just why that was so. The old doubts that had plagued her just a few short years ago with Master Fisto had returned.

She immediately slammed back the thoughts with the one Truth that had ruled her life for almost thirty years: the Jedi Code forbid it. That simple fact had been drilled into each and every Padawan. But were there any Jedi anymore to even follow the Code? She hoped there were, but she could take nothing for granted after the events of three days previous. She saw great wisdom in Harry's inclination to prepare for all situations, and a life where she was one of the last of an Order that numbered almost ten thousand strong just three years ago created a dull ache in her heart.

While she still straddled her companion, she reached behind Harry's neck, she hugged the unconscious male to herself as tightly as she could. After a few moments, she released him and raised herself up. Her Lekku fell forward from behind her shoulders and dangled below her, where the tips just barely skimmed the surface of his chest. She reached forward and gave him a soft kiss on the forehead, then turned over and attempted to rest while at his side.

Sleep would take a long time to arrive with her conflicted thoughts, and the only thing that finally plunged her mind into embrace of Morpheus was the final cessation of the effects of the potion she took that afternoon.

-o0o0o-

Their faces were gaunt. Their glares filled with unspoken accusations.

"Why didn't you save me?" the bloodied green tattooed face of Barriss Offee said as it stared at her through lifeless eyes. "You didn't even attempt to convince him to try. You could have come back a second time to get me."

"You were always a failure. Reckless and emotional. I should have left you on that planet to become a plaything to the Hutts," spoke the half-charred face of Master Vos. His dreadlocks were aflame on one side, and the stink of burned flesh made her stomach roll.

The faces and shouts rose in cadence, and she hardly knew where to look next. Every new direction she looked caused her to face the dead eyes of another friend and comrade as they stared back at her.

"Why did we trust you?" a naked woman in the darkness moaned. Upon closer inspection by Aayla it was revealed to be Master Shaak Ti. "You led us to ruin with your warning. All in the Temple were raped and left for dead because of you."

Aayla stumbled away from the pointed and gnarled red finger of her close friend, but her retreat halted when she bumped up against someone behind her. The pale green skin of her friend and one-time _almost_ romantic interest Master Kit Fisto stood there. His formerly smooth skin was now cracked with dryness, as if he had been exposed to the elements and was began to dry into a mummified husk.

"You tried to save them, but you couldn't save me? You didn't even try. You managed to replace me already with someone else, haven't you? Betrayer."

She couldn't understand why they did this. She backed away, no clue where to turn or run to next, afraid of who else would possibly show up. She wanted to help all of them, she felt her throat tighten and then constrict fully as a small creature clawed its way forward from the distant darkness through the mud that was suddenly around her ankles.

"Never a Jedi, should you have been," the hoarse voice of Grand Master Yoda spoke to her. "Too old you were to have begun. Weakness killed that which twenty-five thousand years has stood for." She saw Master Yoda's hand constrict and twist, and she knew for certain her neck was about to be snapped for her failure to save the Order.

But she suddenly fell to the ground and stood up. She was within one of the flower tree forests of Felucia. There was something in the distance she had to find. It called and beckoned to her. When she arrived though, there was nothing there. Confusion set in, and she began to look around, only to find all 144 clone troopers of the 327th behind her. They pointed their guns silently, their rifles ready to fire.

She saw her friend Bly place his helmet on, and never before in her life did she feel such fear as she did now as she looked at his yellow Commander's armor. The full realization of what the Grand Clone Army of the Republic truly was. They were faceless killing machines meant to inspire terror. Shock Troops. Stormtroopers. The Jedi were simply there for propaganda to help ingratiate them to the populace. She watched, frozen in place as he lowered his arm and signaled permission to the Clones to open fire. Her entire world was enveloped in bright bluish-white light.

"No!" Aayla screamed as she woke from the nightmare, the thin sheet upon her soaked through with sweat. She sat up in the bed and pulled her knees close to her chest. Her hands trembled from the nightmare she had just experienced.

She looked at her bedmate, afraid she might've woke him up with her scream. He no longer seemed to be in the throes of memory absorption and seemed to sleep for once. She pondered waking him and telling him of her nightmare, but decided against it. He was just as tired as her, and he didn't need the added burden of what she supposed was her guilty conscious at her failure to save more of her brethren.

She leaned back, turned on her side, and resumed usual position snuggled into Harry's neck. She breathed in his unique scent, which had grown stronger in the past few hours as it overpowered the soft smell of the soap he had used in the shower. Her own sweat soaked back shivered while exposed to the air, so she reached down and pulled the blankets up, which enveloped both in the warmth of their shared body heat.

Her efforts to avoid thoughts about the nightmare were futile, and she soon felt the moisture run down her cheeks and nose, which quickly became quiet sobs. Could she have done more? Was there any other way more could have been saved? Had they truly exhausted all of their options? How could she have forgotten Barriss after everything else they had done?

Doubt crept into her soul. She knew her lessons back and forth; knew she should not give into it. However, knowing and doing seemed places so far removed from each other at that moment that she could not comprehend how to reconcile them. Slowly, she felt herself give into her despair.

Her sobs must have woken Harry up, as she soon felt strong arms envelop her. A huge burst of protective emotion surged from his body as she felt him realize what happened, and she knew that at least this man didn't blame her for any of the events that had transpired.

"It's ok," she heard him whisper into the conical ear that was an inch from his mouth. "No one is going to hurt you."

"It's all my fault," she inadvertently blurted out. She knew it made no sense whatsoever, but she couldn't help speak what her subconscious mind had betrayed her into admitting out loud in her exhaustion and anguish. "They're all dead because of me."

"Aayla," she felt his sigh as he stopped the way he had slowly rubbed her back and instead squeezed her into a tight hug. "None of this is your fault. You were able to get a warning out, which is more than anyone else was able to. You've done more than any of your comrades to help."

"But-" she began

"But nothing," he quickly interrupted her. "Do you trust me?"

She barely whispered a reply that was more air than sound, "With my life."

She felt his momentarily burst of shock at her admission, which instantly was squashed down in the same way he always seemed to control his emotions. He moved his arm around, and maneuvered it so he could slowly lift her face up with both hands. She watched as he stared into her eyes with those startlingly green orbs. Neither said anything for a few moments.

Finally he spoke, "Then trust me with this. You are one of the strongest people I've ever met. I would be honored to fight alongside you. I am grateful for the selfless help you've given me when I would otherwise be completely alone in this universe." A slow smirk graced one side of his face as a lip curled upwards, "I am infinitely amused by your ability to get under my skin, irritate me to no end, and then con me into cooking you meals afterwards."

Aayla couldn't help but snort at the statement, and felt a small smile begin to tug at the corners of her mouth. He wiped her tears away from her eyes and cheeks with his thumbs and then leaned in close.

"_And I hope to be able to gain the privilege of calling you a life-long friend, Aaylas'ecura_," he spoke the last in her native language of Ryl. She felt her forehead rise briefly in shock before she allowed a full blown smile to erupt on her face.

She felt fresh tears fall, and slowly nodded. He pulled her into another embrace that pulled her almost completely on top of his body. She did not care what others would say at the act. All she did was bask in the protective emotions of that poured from him, and knew she would indeed cherish this friendship to the end of her days.


	6. Unexpected Arrivals

**Summary:**

Harry Potter / Star Wars-over. While leading the final charge against a retreating Dark Lord, Harry is thrown through a destabilized Demon Portal, landing on a strange world in a galaxy far far away.

**Disclaimer**

I don't own Harry Potter in _any _way. JKR has those rights... Also, Star Wars is owned by Lucasfilm/George Lucas, etc etc.

***Author's Note ***

Inspirations: Sword and Magic by bluminous8

*update* 2013-06-09 – minor grammar corrections that were brought to my attention by 'Captain Shoulah' and 'Oh I am Slain'. No change in content.

Chapter First Published: 2013-05-30

Chapter Last Update: 2013-06-09

**Chapter 6 – Unexpected Arrivals**

In each of the next two nights, Aayla was again woken up by nightmares. Each time ended with her crying to sleep in his arms. The following morning, nothing would be spoken of the previous night's events, but Harry had quickly concluded things could not continue as they were.

After that morning's run, Harry decided to confront Aayla about her dreams before she ran off and hid in the shower like she had the past few days.

"We need to talk," he said after he finally got her to sit at the tent's kitchen table.

Aayla didn't acknowledge his statement outwardly other than letting an emotionless façade drop over her face. She merely sat there and stared at the table.

Harry had a vague idea of what he wanted to ask, as well as some suspicions as to what was in Aayla's past, but he could not just blurt those out. Aayla reactions to certain things seemed too similar to things from his own past. He felt the need to lead her to the same conclusion he had reached, so he asked a question he knew she would not expect.

"You said earlier, when this Clone War started, that you were part of some battle that almost every Jedi involved died, right?"

She looked at him strangely, as if she couldn't believe he had remembered that particular bit of information and nodded. But then her eyes visibly dimmed and her gaze returned to the table as her memories surfaced of that particular day's battle.

"What happened to the survivors like you afterwards?" he asked tentatively.

"What do you mean by 'what happened to us'?" she asked as she looked up in total confusion as to the purpose of the question.

"What was the first thing your Council or the Republic ordered you all to do after you had just witnessed over almost all of your attack force wiped out and had come a hair's breath away from death yourselves?"

Just by one look at her, Harry could tell what the answer was, but he needed to for Aayla to get there herself. "They ordered us to prepare to be deployed to help fight in the Clone War. I was sent out about a week afterwards to Corellia to intercept a Techno Union designer who had some stolen droid circuitry and prototype designs. Right after that, I had background study for a deep covert op to have me inserted into a criminal space station in order to find any leads about Master Vos because he was missing at the time. That mission was around two or three months I believe."

Harry nodded, getting confirmation of his fears. "So in other words, they had you right back in the fire immediately after witnessing the death of friends and comrades, some of whom I bet you had known for years. Does that sum it up?"

She nodded and opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off, "…and I bet after the mission to locate the info on Master Vos, they just kept sending you on more missions without a break, right?"

He watched her nod slowly, and could tell she still could not see what the purpose of his line of questioning was.

"On my planet, it doesn't matter if it's in the military or with law enforcement agencies; if someone or a group of people witness something that's horrific or traumatizing, they're typically put on leave. It'll last a few weeks minimum to allow them to have counseling and for them to come to terms with what they've witnessed. I'm not sure what the Galactic term for it is, nor am I doctor, but you need time to cope with the losses and the events you experienced. The Council never saw fit to provide that for any of you who survived that battle?"

Aayla shook her head and looked quite tired, and it had nothing to do with the run they went on that morning. "No, there's a Jedi belief and mantra that is quite appropriate to what you're referring to. Death is a natural part of life. We should rejoice for those who have transformed into the Force. We shouldn't mourn or miss them. Doing so creates attachment, which can lead to jealousy, which is the shadow of greed. To counter this, we train ourselves to let go of everything we fear to lose."

Harry felt absolutely horrified at the short-sightedness of the Jedi, and he was sure his face showed it. "They instructed you all to feel nothing for anyone? To forget about them and act like they never existed? Aayla, I'll say it again: You aren't a machine. Everyone has emotions and forms attachments to others. You can't just squash the feelings down and pretend they aren't there if something bad happens."

"Aayla you have to talk about what you've gone through. About what happened in the war, about what happened a few days ago. It's the only way these nightmares will eventually go away."

He could tell Aayla was in no way convinced of the truth behind his words, so he decided it was time to tell the story of one of the worst sights he had ever witnessed. He took a deep breath, looked her in the eye, and began.

"I had to forcibly put my whole battalion, one of the best on my world, on leave once when an allied group of fighters were completely wiped out due to bad intelligence we had received. We sat there in a concealed position and were forced to watch as a numerically superior force completely obliterated our sister battalion. My people had to sit there in silence as the corpses of their friends and family were desecrated by the enemy right in front of them, knowing full well if they called attention to us, our entire battalion would be killed just the same. Some of my people were angry, some were depressed and despondent. One of my oldest and best friends was the leader of that group that was killed and I had to watch his corpse torn apart by three demons fighting over a meal. Everyone reacts differently to this sort of thing. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert, but even a numbskull like me can tell that you're seriously hurting right now."

"Will you talk to me about it?" he pleaded.

Aayla sat there a long time, not saying anything. She even got up once and walked out of the room, only to come back ten minutes later, without a single word exchanged between the two the entire time. Harry knew that it had to be her choice to talk. He had been through enough therapy sessions that some people just could not be talked into helping themselves. Aayla had to make the first step on her own.

Eventually, the silence defeated her, and she slowly started to talk. Harry simply listened as she poured her heart out, and only offered the simplest questions to persuade her to continue. Ten minutes became thirty, which became an hour. Two hours later, she still had demons to purge as Harry kept the conversation afloat with his carefully worded comments. She discussed every loss she had experienced, every moment of fear, and every time she had seen a friend die. She relived the entire war, mission by mission, battle by battle, triumph by triumph, and loss by loss.

It took a lot to convince her afterwards of the need to keep doing this in the future. One time wouldn't help her mind put all this behind her. Harry even promised to go over his life in detail later; to tear open healed wounds just so she wouldn't be the only one who felt exposed. But she would have to continue to sit down and just talk about things for an hour or so minimum every few days until the nightmares stopped.

"And face it Miss Secura, it's not like you can hide the nightmares from me. You usually smack me while in the middle of one."

Afterwards, Harry felt the mood lift considerably between the two. Unfortunately, his thoughts shifted towards a subject he knew likely would not be comfortable for him to discuss with Aayla. He had serious ideological misgivings with how the Jedi ran things. In his opinion, their whole Order was a mess of contradictions and borderline hypocrisies. He would have to wait until later before he tried to tear down the rose-colored glasses he felt Aayla viewed the organization.

It had, after all, been the Order which had saved her from a life of slavery. If there was anything else, he could definitely understand why Aayla personally thought so highly of it.

-o0o0o-

Daily training had continued for the pair, and more tentative plans and ideas were documented for when they managed to get off-world. They both agreed to start work tomorrow on the ships, where they would move all of the hidden assets they had procured to one location the following morning. Whenever she had a free moment, Aayla had made layout designs on a datapad of possible configurations for the new ship. Harry was incredibly impressed both with her imagination and her technical skills. She left purposeful gaps in the hull of the design, as those represented pieces where they couldn't make direct matches with existing parts and their shapes.

Once Harry introduced Aayla to the field of Transfiguration, she began to stress its use heavily in order to modify existing pieces of hull to fill hull design gaps in the ways she wanted. It would take extra time to complete these particular changes, since a Transfiguration was only permanent by applying runes to the finished shape, which would then drain the magic out of the object and set the metal in that shape permanently.

The internal wiring and various systems was something Harry struggled to understand. She also never failed to poke fun of him his near obsession with the Mass Driver they had stolen from the AT-TE. He would just smirk at her when she did so. It was all for an idea he wished to test out. If it failed, it failed. If it worked however, they would have a very good secret weapon that no one would ever see coming.

On that final afternoon before work was to begin, they had decided to work outside. The number of hours to a day was very different to the number upon Felucia. By staying in the tent all day, they lost almost all track of time since it could be day inside according the tents chronometers and night outside.

He had transfigured a large umbrella over them, along with a fan that had then been charmed to blow air without electricity. Then he conjured some ice underneath it to provide a nice cool breeze for the two of them. He could have accomplished all of this easily with some cooling charms, but he admittedly was bored, and just wanted to be different. Aayla was amused simply because it was another practical application of his skills to see.

They had sat there in the humid afternoon air for a while, when he noticed Aayla had periodically glanced at the sky more and more. Eventually the stares occurred often enough that he had to ask, "Is something wrong?"

"I don't know. Nothing," she stopped though at the glare he aimed at her. Sighing, she said, "Just a feeling."

Harry had been completely absorbed in his own rune work so he had not paid much attention to the area around them. He opened his mind and reached out, trying to get a sense if something approached or if this mystical Force would possibly drop him a message about what was going on.

He sucked in a breath however as his mind immediately encountered two other magical beings high above them. One was powerful, probably a bit more so than Aayla. The other Harry would've guessed to be the equivalent to the average teenager almost to the end of Hogwarts.

He stood up abruptly and vanished the umbrella, fan, and ice. He looked pointedly at the sky in the direction he felt the newcomers, but could not see anything yet.

"What?" asked Aayla at his sudden removal of limited creature comforts he had provided them, and looked wildly around herself.

"We have incoming. Two individuals, one a bit more powerful then you, other one feels… younger somehow," he told her quickly.

"I'm going to put everything inside the cave. The question is, do we stay outside? If we go under the Fidelius, no one should be able to sense us. If we stay out here, I bet they come straight for us. Do you want to risk it? More than likely, they've already felt me. I haven't been hiding myself for a few days now."

She didn't say anything for a few moments. Harry felt he had to throw in, "You're the expert around here Aayla. I'll back whatever decision you go with."

She nodded in relief and then without hesitation replied, "We wait for them here."

Harry gave her a tight smile and squeezed her shoulder. "I knew you were decisive under pressure. I'll get this stuff under cover. Be ready to retreat via portkey though just in case."

It took only a few minutes for him to dispose of any external presence they had built up outside the cave. A few waves of Harry's wand and all footprints and indentations they had made had smoothed out as well. It left the local area as if the ground had never been disturbed by their presence.

The duo stood there silently and waited to see whom it was. Harry had pulled his own aura back in, and had asked Aayla for the aura-repressing necklace she wore. If they were about to allow whoever was on approach to sense who was in the camp, he felt it was better to do it via Aayla's aura and have Harry sit there as an unknown.

He disillusioned himself and stood behind her, hands on her shoulders. He didn't know why, but he couldn't help but feel a bit of fear. Aayla had been the only person he had spoken to in the four days since he had arrived here on Felucia. Internally he pondered what they were about to face. They were either Jedi or they were the two Sith. Statistically, they were likely Jedi, as he could not imagine the Sith on Felucia without an entire fleet to bomb them from orbit, especially after Aayla had described the now dead Count Dooku's methods.

"Relax Harry, more than likely these are allies. Trust the Force to get us through this. I don't see the Force bringing you here and then saving me just to have us then die."

"Okay" was all he said.

His mind wandered despite the temporary morale boost from Aayla. He couldn't help but wonder what Aayla would now do if the two on the ship were allies? She was his only friend here. For all intents and purposes, Harry didn't exist in this universe. Aayla could wash her hands of Harry, leave with the two people on the ship, and he would never likely see her again. Harry had lived for almost a third of his life with no friends, and it was still very difficult for him to suppress the basic fear he always carried that a new friend might leave him.

"Harry, I can feel your fear and anxiety building. It'll be fine, please trust me"

The silence stretched. He could feel the ship draw nearer. Soon there was a rumbling in the clouds from far in the distance. The tension built again, and he responded the only way he knew how, with humor, "You know, this is really unfortunate. Now I have to share you with two other people."

She laughed a high music-like laugh. "I think you'll survive. Besides, I still need my pillow to squeeze at night if I have my nightmares."

"Oh, that's all I am to you, huh? Just a thing for you to abuse and give bruises to in your sleep?"

"No," her eyes shining as she looked over her shoulder at him, inches from his face, a bright smile still on her face. "You cook my dinner as well."

He rolled his eyes, but felt just a bit of the tension leave him as well just as a louder roar of engines passed overhead and got both of their attention.

The ship's appearance made it certainly one of the oddest craft he had seen thus far. It was disc-shaped in overall appearance, with what looked like a band of engines in the back. If the thing had lights all the way around it could've passed vaguely for one of the famed 'Roswell' alien spacecraft back on Earth. If he had to describe it in general terms, he would say it was a hamburger with an olive on the side with some goofy teeth poking straight out from the front.

"It's a YT-1300 freighter. The company that manufactures them has slowly refined its design for centuries. This one in particular is one of the most popular ship designs in recent memory. We're likely to see quite a few of them once we get out into the more commercial areas of the galaxy."

"How about the important question, can we trust who is onboard?" asked Harry

She smiled while she looked over her shoulder again at where she knew he stood invisibly. "Yes, it's Master Shaak Ti," and she began to move vaguely over to the now landed ship."

After he breathed a sigh of relief, Harry cancelled his disillusionment and followed. He began to study the surface of the ship more closely now that it was stationary and only a few dozen meters away. He attempted to identify individual parts of the ship, but with his limited knowledge, he could only indistinctly assign names like 'landing gear', 'cockpit', and 'sensor array' to things. He saw two individuals stand up in the windows of the cockpit and leave through a hatch in the rear of the compartment, so he assumed the two Jedi inside were about to disembark the ship.

He received his confirmation almost immediately when a ramp was lowered to the ground from just behind the cockpit. Steam was let off from everywhere under the ship, giving a vaguely mysterious effect which Harry had to laugh at. He looked over at Aayla, who had a half-smile on her face. He stood somewhat away from Aayla, since he figured he should not intrude upon the reunion of friends that was about to take place.

Two figures came down the ramp, and Aayla rushed over and hugged the woman Harry instantly recognized from their earlier holo-communication. "Master Ti!" she exclaimed as she ran, both women embraced each other tightly.

Aayla had explained earlier that Master Shaak Ti was a Togrutan. She had red skin with white patches around her dark ebony eyes. Her body was mostly humanoid, with the exception of large thick horns that grew upwards from both sides of her head, and two Lekku-like tentacles extending down from underneath them onto her chest with two more that extended down her back. Aayla had mentioned they were a warrior people who valued the art of the hunt very highly within their culture.

The second Jedi was obviously still a Padawan. She looked almost completely human, with jet black hair tied in thin braids that wound around her neck like a choker. If her hair had been unbraided, Harry knew the length would easily extend to her knees or lower. Her skin looked almost unnaturally pale, so much that Harry wondered if her people lived underground or were normally nocturnal. There were half a dozen very small red nub-like horns on the top of her head, but her most striking feature to Harry was her orange-red eyes.

Master Ti and Aayla embraced for a few moments before they released each other. "Aayla, thank the Force you were able to get the warning out. If you had not the consequences would have been utterly disastrous."

"So it worked?" Aayla asked excitedly. "You were able to spread the word to save some of the Jedi?"

Shaak Ti's face seemed pained for a second to Harry. He instantly gave a quick mental laugh at that assessment, as the identification of how another species emotions tied to their facial quirks was something he would not dare attempt to claim any advanced knowledge after he had only seen her in person for a minute.

"Not all were. We saved many, but still experienced many casualties." She gestured to the young woman next to her, "Such as Padawan Brood's former Master."

Aayla seemed to visibly deflate, and Harry could tell from the way her Lekku moved that she felt quite upset suddenly. His interpretation lessons about the subtle movements of her Lekku had lasted a few days now, and he had slowly started to intuitively recognize their meanings during normal conversation. He was surprised to learn how expressive they were, and how they could be used to unintentionally gauge a Twi'lek's mood, or for subtle communication while undercover.

"I am sorry for your loss, Padawan Brood."

The young woman nodded jerkily, "Thank you, Master Secura."

"And who is your friend you haven't introduced us to, Aayla?" Shaak Ti said as she became aware of Harry standing away from the Jedi.

He saw Aayla's face light up again, and he felt a sudden sense of dread at the introduction his mischievous Twi'lek friend was about to subject him to. But he was surprised when she was very serious with her words. "This man is the reason I was even able to get the message out, Master Ti. This is Harry Potter."

Harry stepped forward and extended a hand, "Pleasure to meet you, Master Ti."

She smiled as she took his hand in a very firm grip, "If you are indeed the reason for the warning, the Jedi Order owes you a great debt, Harry Potter."

"I didn't do all that much," said Harry.

To this day, the acceptance of a freely given compliment was still something he had trouble with. It was an unfortunate left-over from his years of abuse at the hands of his loving relatives. For years, he had tried to forcibly learn to graciously accept complements when they were made, but he was always nervous around new people.

"Didn't do that much?" Aayla had nearly in incredulity. "You saved my life after I got shot in the back seven times by my own troops. You somehow healed those injuries in under seven hours. You brought me back in time nine hours so we could warn the Jedi Order, and then you helped me steal parts, ships, and supplies so we could attempt to start our getaway over the next few days."

Harry couldn't help but give a sheepish grin, "Well it sounds much more impressive when you list it all out like that."

"Whatever, you goof," said Aayla with an annoyed eye-roll. "Harry, this is Padawan Maris Brood."

Harry extended a hand again, "Pleasure to meet you, Maris. My condolences on your loss."

The teenage girl took the hand, though her grip was nowhere near as firm and decisive as Shaak Ti. "Thank you, Harry Potter"

"Just Harry is fine."

"I agree with Aayla, your achievements sound very impressive Harry. Will you be able to share with us how it was accomplished?"

Harry was about to say something when Aayla interrupted with a large shit-eating grin on her face, "Harry's a Wizard."

'_She didn't just say it out loud like that, did she?_' Harry groaned internally.

The raised eyebrow and small smirk from Maris was all he needed for confirmation that his ears functioned properly, and Aayla had indeed just blurted out with no preamble that he was a Wizard. He waited for one of the two Jedi to make some '_primitive civilizations think the Force is magic_' argument like Aayla initially did when he decided to head off the whole thing before it could start.

"He believes the Force is Mag-" began Shaak Ti, but her question stopped mid-word as Harry conjured two comfortable chairs for him and Maris to sit in.

"Maris, let's sit down while our elders discuss how Magic doesn't exist," he said, mirth in his eyes at how wide Shaak Ti and Maris' eyes were at the moment.

"That's impossible," whispered Shaak Ti, stunned almost to the point of inaction. Harry was even happier to see Aayla's mock-glare for his reference to her as an elder.

"Have a seat Maris," Harry motioned to the chair beside him with a cheeky grin as he leaned back in his own and conjured an ottoman to place his feet upon. "Care for something to drink?" he asked Maris as she moved to sit down.

After she declined, he turned back to Aayla. "Anything else you wish to point out, Aayla?" said Harry as a challenge to the blue Twi'lek as he sipped a newly conjured fruity flavored drink with an umbrella in it. He had enjoyed finding those small exceptions to Gamp's law that concerned food conjuration. He may not be able to eat off magic, but he could sure get drunk from it.

"No, that's all for now. I'm sure we can talk about the time-travel and self-teleportation stuff later," she said with a cheeky grin that betrayed her obvious enjoyment with the conversation.

"Well, in the meantime, how about we all go inside the tent we have and cool off. I'm not particularly keen on standing around in the open humidity out here anymore than I have to," said Harry.

After he helped Maris up from her temporary seat, he waved a hand and vanished the chairs. He slipped an around up and around Aayla's shoulder and whispered, "I'm so going to get you for this. Just you wait. The moment you turn your back, you'll be white with pink polka dots before the end of the day instead of blue."

Eyes wide, Aayla couldn't stutter out a reply before he began walked away, but he did hear Maris whisper loudly to Shaak Ti, "Did you feel the Force when he did that?"

They followed Harry to the mouth of the cave, which only he and Aayla could see. He conjured a small piece of paper and a pen, and then wrote out the secret. "Oh, I get to see the joke played on someone else this time, don't I?" said Aayla with excitement.

Harry handed the paper to Shaak Ti and said, "Memorize what this says, then hand it to Maris for her to do the same."

Aayla bounced upon her heels at this point. He didn't think he had ever seen the Twi'lek excited like this before. Shaak Ti saw Aayla's excitement after she handed the note to Maris, quirked an eyebrow and said, "Control yourself Knight Secura. You have better command of your emotions than this."

"Oh, you wouldn't control yourself either if you knew what was about to happen," said Aayla with a grin as she watched Maris finish with the note. Harry took the paper from the teenager, and to the newcomer's shock, it burst into flames in his hands.

"Now, I want you both to stare at that mountain right in front of us, and think about the meaning behind what you just memorized," Harry said as he watched the two carefully.

There was a moment's silence, and then an almost simultaneous gasp of surprise erupted from both women. They looked wildly back and forth between each other and the cave, at a complete loss for words.

"How?" was the single word Shaak Ti finally managed to ask.

"'Let's go inside and talk, there's a lot to cover and I don't feel like standing out here in the heat. And I don't think I can handle much more of hyper-Aayla without sitting down first," said Harry tiredly.

Shaak Ti and Maris both gave dubious looks to the tent as Harry entered, which left Aayla outside to literally cackle in glee before she followed him inside. Their reactions as they walked inside the tent were mirror copies of Aayla's first entrance, which Harry reminded Aayla of after her laughter filled the tent's great room. He finally managed to get all three women to sit down when Aayla started in with the questions while Harry went to get the three women water to drink.

"Ok, I know Harry and I owe you some explanations, but we've been purposefully out of the loop now for a little over four days. What's going on out there?"

Shaak Ti composed herself quickly and began, "First off, we managed to get the younglings all onto a transport and evacuated from the temple within fifteen minutes of your warning. They were out of the Coruscant system within thirty. All 450 of them. They were sent to the… _location_ with twelve Masters, four Knights, and three dozen Padawans. They also left with the most recent archived backup core of the Jedi Library along with numerous other hastily collected artifacts from our history."

"Wow, that must've been a big ship. See," Harry said with a smile while giving Aayla a nudge with his elbow. "Still think that you didn't make a difference?"

Aayla favored him with an even brighter smile before turning back to Shaak Ti, who looked at them strangely before she continued, "They've been ordered to remain under a communications black-out for twenty years unless notified to the contrary by a member of the Council with a specific pass-phrase."

"What about all the Jedi deployed with the Clone troopers?" asked Aayla.

"We had four dozen ranked Jedi in the Temple communications center contacting as many Jedi out in the field as they could for almost an hour. Each Jedi we contacted was given two more specific Jedi to contact. I have no idea how much of the deployment list we got through, or how many the Jedi in the field actually communicated with their assignments, but the results certainly speak for themselves."

A small smirk that looked decidedly deadly graced Shaak Ti's face. "You two did a bit of sabotage to your battle group before they departed, didn't you?"

Aayla and Harry nodded, both a bit wary of the look Shaak Ti was giving them. Maris listened as well, but was either uninterested because she had heard it before, or the death of her Master had really hit the girl hard.

"Your entire battle group was destroyed while travelling in hyperspace. Completely fragged everything. The Chancellor even had to close down that specific hyperspace lane until the debris can be cleared since its spread over such a wide distance. It's now well over two and a half light-years of junk. It'll take years… if not decades for that particular lane to be cleared."

"You weren't the only two who decided to sabotage things before going into hiding. Forty Percent of the Republic Navy is currently destroyed or disabled. Less than half of what remains have made it to dry dock for repairs thus far. We have no idea about troop losses they incurred. There were many battles that day, some planned weeks in advance, all to occur at the same time. When the orders were backtracked, it was found that the Chancellor himself, or members of his personal staff, often were subtly influencing the time of day we were to engage the enemy four days ago. I think he was hoping to make a large number of the executions look like accidents that occurred in battle that could be easily covered up."

An even broader smile now graced Shaak Ti's face, "But of course that failed. Many of the Jedi who were in the middle of active conflicts against the droid armies found ways for their forces to be completely annihilated by the Separatist forces. The Republic has never suffered so many simultaneous mission failures during the same day. The droid armies simply rolled over the Clones in some cases. The escaping Jedi Generals ordered massive holes in defenses to be opened so that the droids just crashed through."

"We were lucky, our people trusted us when they were informed. Almost all of them believed us, despite how unbelievable it sounded at first. We think it has something to do with the Veil of the Dark Side evaporating. I've personally never felt such a reaction or connection to the Force in decades. Its guidance is so clear now, where before it was as if we were flying blind so often when we sought direction in the Force."

"That definitely sounds like good news," said Harry. "At least you all won't be facing the massive armada you could have been had none of this happened."

"A blessing from the Force," said Aayla quietly, looking down at the floor.

"Yes, truly. And we owe all of that to you. To you both," said Shaak Ti. "We have many ancient communication arrays at the Temple. The Chancellor, in his short-sightedness, never actually sought to block all of them when he closed down the primary Holonet at the start of the Clone War. We contacted numerous Core World governments, and asked them all to spread the word. We told them the truth; that the Jedi intended to request the Chancellor stand down from his post, as he agreed to years ago when the crisis ended and General Grievous was killed. If he refused, he would be arrested. We also forwarded our evidence that Palpatine was a Sith Lord, one likely behind all events of note in the Galaxy since the Blockade of Naboo. More importantly, he was actually running both the Separatists and the Republic at the same time, playing both against each other."

"We told them of our suspicions, that if we failed to arrest the Chancellor, he would likely declare the Order, as a group, traitors and order our immediate executions. We informed them of the Clone's programming, how they would automatically obey, without question an order received from the highest authority. The Chancellor could order the clones to attack, kill, or execute any sentient being in the galaxy without anyone else's input or oversight. That was how much power the Senate had ceded to him."

"That wasn't the bit of news that helped the Order the most though. I ordered the Temple's defenses activated for the first time in almost 1,100 years, and began broadcasting the security camera's footage of the outside to news agencies on Correllia and Alderaan. Almost an hour and a half after you warned us. Master Skywalker stormed the Temple at the head of the entire 501st Legion. It was quite easy to interpret his intent."

"Skywalker?" blurted out Aayla, suddenly awake after she had initially just let the information overload she was had received integrate. "He led an attack on the Temple?"

"The Dark Side of the Force was so palpably emanating from him it was almost sickening. There's no doubt that he was leading them there in order to wipe us all out, including the younglings. Most of the clones were decimated by the Temple's defenses. We're lucky that even though the Chancellor had him appointed to the Council, we never truly let him into the major secrets of the Order."

She paused, and looked a bit disgusted with what she was about to say. "I've already heard rumors. He no longer goes by the name Anakin Skywalker. He is now known as Darth Vader.".

"No!" shouted Aayla as she stood, the full disbelief and denial of what she heard evident upon her face. Harry didn't know what to do. Maris just looked even sadder at the news, while Shaak Ti looked on sympathetically.

"Who's Skywalker?" asked Harry.

"You haven't heard of Anakin Skywalker? '_The Hero without Fear'?_" asked Maris suddenly.

"Nope," said Harry. "I'm not exactly from these parts. In general, pretty much treat me like I don't know anything about pretty much everything."

Aayla, already somewhat recovered from her outburst, smacked him lightly on the head, "You know plenty, Harry. Don't belittle yourself. You've been picking up a lot of things already since you got here a few days ago."

"If you say so. I still think I'll be a liability with everything except fighting," said Harry.

At Shaak Ti's inquisitive look Aayla quickly said, "I'll explain later. What else happened then?"

"Well, Skywalker eventually found a way in, and the remaining Master's and I waited till the last possible moment to evacuate and scatter into the Coruscant underworld. I managed to take a skylift and public transport to the other side of the planet, where I was able to… _liberate_ a smuggler's ship. He was a slaver, so I had no qualms about stealing his so-called cargo from him as well. The cargo bay was filled with a dozen chained female Twi'leks, Togrutans, Bothans, and Humans. I dropped them off on Alderaan at our consulate there, and then left immediately for here. I figured I would check and ensure you were safe since you got the word out to us in the first place."

"On the way, I decided to drop out of Hyperspace. It was a feeling, that I now think originated with the Force. I was near a star system, so I altered course to the inhabited planet there. I arrived in orbit just as I felt Maris' Master's death echo in the Force. I could still sense Maris on the planet though, so I landed and picked her up before she could be hunted down. From there, I continued out to the outer rim and doubled back just to try and lose anyone possibly following, and, here we are."

"In the meantime, much of the Galaxy is now in open revolt. The broadcast of clones attacking the Temple is what sealed the deal, especially, when the full context of what exactly happened was explained to viewers. Roughly half of the sectors are squarely against the former Republic as it stands. Fully a third are behind the Chancellor, though no one has been able to determine the political reasons behind that faction's choices yet. The remainders are neutral or are the remnants of the old Trade Federation and Separatist block and want nothing to do with anyone after the betrayal. But many of the Separatists themselves have since rejoined the anti-Republic block after finding out just how badly they had been deceived."

Aayla and Harry sat there stunned by the news. Harry turned to Aayla, and placed his hand over hers, "Looks like there's some hope after all."

Shaak Ti continued, "What really hurt the Chancellor's case was when he attempted to declare himself 'Emperor of a new Galactic Empire' within hours of Order 66.' Quite a few Senators just started laughing and the rest started an open revolt right in the Senate Chambers. It didn't help that much of this was caught on Planetary News broadcasts that were live in the Senate chambers at the time. After our broadcast at the Temple, many of the planets realized that Palpatine wasn't blocking the older means of communication other than the holonet, so they provided the first live broadcast of the Senate since the general Holonet was shut down at the start of the war. When the Senate's reaction of laughter turned to anger, Palpatine sent in Royal Guards to quell the uprising, and many planets got to witness their Senators murdered live on their Holo screens."

Aayla nodded, and turned to Shaak Ti, "We hadn't heard any of this. We've been purposefully laying low the past few days, and then tomorrow we were going to attempt to build a ship out of parts of four ships we hid before the clones abandoned the planet."

"I think you're skipping ahead in the story a bit, might as well get my crazy part of things out of the way," said Harry.

And so they explained together, what had happened. Harry described the Demon War back on Earth, his travel through the portal, and his appearance here on Felucia. He showed them the attack on Aayla in the Pensieve. Aayla had seen it twice before, but it was still very painful to watch her troops turn on her. Shaak Ti and Maris were appalled at the turn of events, as well as amazed by Harry's abilities. He described healing her injuries, though he didn't delve deeply into his methods. Then, he told how he had gone back in time with Aayla, though he lied and said the device was now useless and no longer functioned. He saw no reason to pass on that there was still one grain of sand left in the time-turner.

Aayla described her version of the events with a sense of wonder. How Harry had cleared the telecommunications room out, how he had shrunk down pallet after pallet of medicine and foodstuffs, and how he had hidden two Larty's and both Barriss' and her star fighters. Then she described how they had been depending upon each other emotionally for the past few days after Harry had been permanently ripped away from his world and Aayla survived an attempted murder.

Then Harry explained what they had been doing the past few days. He discussed the magical training he started to impart to Aayla in the hope she could learn to suppress her aura, as well as eventually teach her Occlumency. Both Shaak Ti and Maris agreed to learn the skills as well once they were described. Aayla handed over the datapad that listed their current inventory of supplies, both the stolen ones and Harry's. Shaak Ti shook her head in wonder at the descriptions of Harry's items from Earth, and could not wait to see some of them in action or browse through some of the books on Magical theory once she learned his language.

All of them in fact were very interested to learn Harry's language just as he had learned Galactic Basic, Huttese, and Ryl. He only asked that they not spread news of his abilities any further than this group of four. Aayla trusted Shaak Ti, so Harry would trust her judgment, but Harry didn't trust the rest of the Jedi Order yet.

Aayla went on to then discuss the Jedi abilities she had tried to teach Harry thus far. She didn't attempt to describe Harry's first Force Jump; she merely asked him with a twinkle in her golden eyes to show them in the Pensieve. An extremely reluctant Harry only did so after he was thoroughly badgered by Aayla. He watched in embarrassed silence as the three women emerged from the Pensieve and laughed merrily at his inopportune loss of concentration.

They had talked through the afternoon and it slowly grew dark outside. Maris' stomach grumbled loudly and she embarrassedly admitted to not having eaten yet that day. Shaak Ti informed them the stolen freighter did not have much in terms of food onboard, which spoke highly to the former owner's treatment of his slaves.

"Chop chop, Harry. Get to work on dinner. You have four people to feed tonight," Aayla said cheerily.

"You know, I have yet to see you cook anything after four days here. Do you actually have any useful talents that can help us out around here?" asked Harry with an eyebrow quirked.

"I did the laundry yesterday if you recall," responded Aayla with her hands on her hips.

"After I begged you for a day to do it, and then you turned some of my white clothes pink," Harry half-shouted in exasperation.

"That was totally not my fault. How was I supposed to know that would happen?"

Harry threw his hands up in frustration and left the room to prepare dinner.

-o0o0o-

Aayla watched Harry leave the room to prepare dinner. She knew he wasn't really all that mad about the clothes or constant food prep duties, but she realized she really should not constantly push him like she had. Maybe she could enlist Maris or Shaak Ti into helping her think of something to cheer him up.

"So," said Shaak Ti, who had watched the whole exchange between her long-time Rutian Twi'lek friend and the strange Wizard with half a smile on her face. "How long has this attraction to him been growing?"

"What?" exclaimed Aayla as her arm slipped from the arm of the sofa as she heard the question. "What are you talking about?"

"Aayla, you've never been one for subtlety. You have always worn your heart on your sleeve. Right now, you're completely dependent upon him emotionally."

After she sat down, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, Aayla said with resignation, "Is this where you scold me and begin my lecture about forming attachments and where it will lead?"

Shaak Ti leaned back on the couch and studied Aayla's face for a moment, but slowly shook her head. "Aayla, I watched you and Master Fisto every time you entered the Council chambers. I watched as a little piece of you died each time I saw you act together because of how you both had to deny what should have been yours. Quite a few members of the order disagree about the ban on celibacy, especially considering how Master Ki-Adi-Mundi was able to get the rules bent for him to have a family. Many even actively flout it and have secret families. It may be Taboo, but many members have long since turned the other cheek over it."

Aayla had lifted her head up at this, but then slowly shook her head. "I cannot control where the Force leads me, nor can I predict if something will happen."

Shaak Ti sighed and shook her head in exasperation, "Nor should you. In the end you are responsible for you, your choices, and the consequences."

In an effort to lighten the mood, Shaak Ti turned to Maris, "Any opinions, Padawan Brood for Knight Secura on the path she should pursue?"

Maris, who to this point had quietly observed the two very well-known and experienced Jedi, looked momentarily stunned at having her opinion consulted. "I'm not sure Master. I don't believe I'm qualified to make such a judgment."

As she opened her mouth to respond, Shaak Ti was beaten to the punch by Aayla, "Maris, the four of us will be around each other a lot I think. We have no orders or missions at the moment, and the Jedi Order itself is fractured and scattered throughout the galaxy. I think you'll find the three of us will value your opinion precisely because of your age and point of view."

With a nod of agreement, Shaak Ti added, "We have a Master, a Knight who for all intents and purposes _should_ be a Master given her experience, a mid-level Padawan with a good head on her shoulders, and a Wizard who I believe will shake everything we believe to be true about the Force to its core. I have a feeling the next few weeks will be very exciting for us as we encounter and learn new things. You have a voice during all of this, we expect you to use it."

Maris sat in quiet contemplation for a moment before her shoulders slumped and she nodded. She eventually lifted her head, and a slow smirk etched its way across her face. "He is quite attractive, and those green eyes," she finished with a theatrical over-the-top flutter of her voice that had Shaak Ti almost fall over in laughter and caused Aayla to throw a pillow at her in mock-outrage.

-o0o0o-

The sounds of laughter from the other room were enough to strike fear in the heart of the most stalwart of men. Harry Potter was explicitly aware of what was happening just a few meters away. It was an occurrence of something that could drive men to insanity at the best of times and leave them cowering, shivering wrecks of their former selves.

Women gossiping.

'_Well, at least I won't be the only one for Aayla to lean on in case the nightmares continue,_' he thought sadly. He liked being there for Aayla, and would have easily pondered dating the woman had she been on Earth. But it was quite obvious he had no shot at all with a romantic relationship with the woman since she had revealed the particulars of her Order's views on relationships..

'_The "Rutian" woman_,' Harry laughed to himself internally. He had inquired what the word meant after Shaak Ti had mentioned it in passing. He had been unaware that Rutian referred to the color of Aayla's skin, and apparently it was quite rare amongst her people. Normally, Twi'leks were a light green, but there were numerous other colors, such as white and brown, with the rarest of all being a blood red.

He just needed to find out from Shaak Ti or Maris which colors didn't exist naturally… such as pink. Then all he would have to accomplish is figure out how to cast a glamour on her that would not be permanent on accident.

'_Turn my clothes pink, I'll show her_,' thought Harry as he did his best to channel whatever God of Mischief that George prayed to in order to be so successful.

The dinner prep-work was finished. He levitated all the plates out of the kitchen and set the table. "Food's ready," he shouted vaguely to the room, where laughter was still present in sufficient enough quantities to still send a shiver down his spine.

He received excellent compliments on his cooking abilities from Shaak Ti and Maris, but only the usual comments that it could be a bit spicier from Aayla.

Conversation was light, and for a large part, he was a silent observer. It split between Maris' discussions of her training's progress and Shaak Ti's and Aayla's insights on what her next logical step would be. Shaak Ti had already stated for now that Maris would learn from all three of them unless extraordinary circumstances presented themselves.

The mention of Harry as an instructor for Maris caused him to ask why to Shaak Ti.

"I sit here, Harry, eating food from a world that has never known spaceflight beyond its own system. Speaking to someone who uses the Force in ways I could've never dreamed possible. I mean, seriously, we're sitting in an apartment inside a tent, that's in a cave that's hidden, with windows that look outside," she said the last part amidst her own laughter, which earned smiles from the other three in the room.

"I'm well aware that what you know and could teach us could take you decades to pass on to us, not only just because of how much there is for you to teach, but for the rigid opposition against change that exists within the Order," she continued, before she paused to stare vacantly at a wall in thought..

"Aayla's always been a maverick, pushing the envelope just to the edge. I've always been rather solitary as a Knight. I've rarely taken Padawans, and then usually only as a temporary measure. Maris," she gestured and allowed her eyes to settle upon the young woman she had rescued. "Maris is still an blank slate. Her whole life still awaits her. I would like her to be one of the first to know the things you can teach."

Harry nodded. "I'll teach you whatever I can. There are a few things I may document but keep to myself. I know quite a few rather violent spells. No need to pass those on at the moment when there are so many other useful things you could learn. In fact some of those I would be happier if they never saw the light of day again."

"What can you teach us?" asked Maris, clearly interested in learning new things at the same time as two people she clearly respected.

"Well, Aayla and I started assembling a list of what's different about our powers a few days ago. There are about six or seven specific areas we can focus on, mainly Charms, Transfiguration, Curses, Warding, Enchantments, and magical forms of travel. There are many others as well, but those are the big ones."

"But those are long-term goals for the moment. Tomorrow, the two of us were going to start building a ship in earnest. We could really use the extra help. Aayla will likely be doing a lot of the wiring and systems work on her own, because you know I don't know anything about these things."

"Definitely, we can't leave you and Aayla here all _by yourselves_ to work on it," Maris said with a innocent look on her face that seemed to get a rise out of Aayla and suppressed mirth from Shaak Ti.

"Uh, right. Well, it's getting a bit late, I take it you have quarters aboard your ship, do either of you need to use our shower or anything like that? Clean water is not an issue."

"I think we'll both manage tonight with the ship's sonic shower. But your runes as you call them, really have me excited. Imagine, having a real working shower aboard a ship and not having to worry about water storage and waste reclamation," said Shaak Ti fondly.

Maris agreed, and casually picked up a datapad she that was configured to pick up galactic news. She gave a small gasp after she glanced at the screen. "The battles have begun," said Maris quietly.

"What?" "What do you mean?" said Aayla and Shaak Ti together as they walked over to read over the Padawan's shoulder.

"It's from the Corellian News agency," said Maris as she summarized the article. "Fleet blockades were established along trade routes leading to some of the major inner and near Core Worlds, such as Corellia, Rendilli, and Kuat. All it says is that the Corellian Navy has already engaged the so-called Empire."

"That's rather ominous," said Harry. "I guess that means we'll have to move Corellia as an option to behind Chandrilla. Alderaan will still be our primary place to attempt contact with the rest of your people. Hopefully it will still be as safe as it was when you stopped over there a few days ago, Shaak Ti."

Silence reigned as the full implications of yet another galactic war settled down upon the three Jedi.

"Well, we'll head back to the ship to sleep tonight. We'll come by tomorrow morning and we'll start figuring out what to do next," said Shaak Ti.

"We try getting up at sunrise to run. Harry, I'd like to continue, if you don't mind?" asked Aayla.

"Sure." Turning back to Shaak Ti he asked, "Do you have everything you need on the ship? I can transfigure you extra beds, blankets and pillows if you like. No effort at all involved really."

Shaak Ti accepted the offer, and Harry was back in the tent fifteen minutes later after he saw the inside of his first starship. It was not that impressive, likely because he was distracted after he clearly saw where the previous owner tied up his slaves. His imagination placed green girls who looked like Aayla tied up in the corner to be sold. He had refused to leave the ship until he had removed all remnants of the ships former usage. It did not take long to transfigure the chains and cell bars into stacked ingots of durasteel. Shaak Ti had inquired why he was so adamant to do it immediately, so he shared what he knew about Aayla's greatest fear with her since he knew they were friends and close confidants.

He joined Aayla in the bedroom after his shower and their nightly healing session progressed as normal. After four days, there was some definite visible difference to the scars, though Aayla said the ones she could reach didn't feel different yet.

They were both finally in bed, with Aayla draped over him like normal. He had really begun to like his time alone in bed with her. Realization slowly dawned upon him that the friendship shared with Aayla had quickly approached the level of best friend, and he had achieved a comfort level with his conversations with her that he had not reached in many years, if ever.

"So what do you think of us having visitors now?" he asked as they both lay quiet in the darkness. They talked for hours in bed the past few nights, since he no longer passed out early due to language absorption.

"It's good to see Master Ti again. She's always been a great friend, and always provides good advice."

"You mean gossiping like teenagers whenever I'm not in the room?" said Harry with a chuckle.

"Well, that too. Are you jealous? Do you need some male companionship to offset our femininity?"

When he only snorted and didn't respond, Aayla decided to dig a bit deeper, "Or do you need _that_ kind of male companionship, Harry? I thought you liked girls?"

He graced her barb only with a quirked eyebrow, "I assure you, I'm very interested in only women, Knight Secura."

"Well, you had two additional highly attractive females in our sitting room tonight, and you hardly glanced at them."

"You mean I didn't mentally undress the three beautiful Jedi who aren't allowed relationships with my eyes tonight? And you're somehow disappointed by this? I didn't know instead of no-relationships there were secretive Jedi harems instead."

She suddenly coughed in shock at his remark, and Harry couldn't help but laugh. "Oh my gosh, did I win for once?"

She responded merely with a lift of her head and mock glare at him in the darkness. Harry could easily make out the reflected light of her golden eyes. She reached up, placing her hand against Harry's cheek, and then casually flicked his ear.

"Ow, what was that for?"

"Winning," Aayla said after put her head back down on Harry's shoulder.

"So what do I win?"

He felt her squeeze his body in a quick burst and relax her arms. "I'll think of something."

With one last deep breath and sigh, she said finally, "Good night, Harry."


	7. Ship Construction

**Summary:**

Harry Potter / Star Wars-over. While leading the final charge against a retreating Dark Lord, Harry is thrown through a destabilized Demon Portal, landing on a strange world in a galaxy far far away.

**Disclaimer**

I don't own Harry Potter in _any _way. JKR has those rights... Also, Star Wars is owned by Lucasfilm/George Lucas, etc etc.

***Author's Note ***

Inspirations: Sword and Magic by bluminous8

This was always a transition/fluff chapter, and I hated it from the get go. Problem is, I've always disliked stories that go: "And then over the course of the next few days, they did this stupidly awesome thing that I'm not going to describe and instead summarize it in a paragraph." I could've summarized almost all of this chapter in a paragraph, but that sounded really lame and boring to me. Plus it would have lost me a whole slew of opportunities to start the seeds of fleshing out Shaak Ti and Maris.

Again, people complain about how slow the ramp up of the story is. My take on it is that their relationships are developing. This is where each character gets to know each other, since they're still half in shock and isolated, and it's a gradual process over that first week or so of events post-Order 66. As the story progresses further, time will start to pass more quickly.

Also, be very mindful of the timeline. My assumption is that Anakin takes a very leisurely pace (at least 6-7 days to go from Coruscant to Mustafar, and then he holes up there for a day or two pondering what he's done. I've always been very curious about how much time elapses in the post Order 66 part of 'Revenge of the Sith'. Especially how long it takes Yoda to go from Wookie'ville, to Coruscant, to Alderaanian asteroid. I'm sure there are star wars junkies out there that can tell me the exact time frame, but this is my take on it all.

Chapter First Published: 2013-07-01

Chapter Last Update:

**Chapter 7 – Ship Construction**

The daily morning exercise became a group affair the following morning, and it offered several new experiences for Harry. First, he could see that, despite his high opinion of Aayla's abilities and strength, Shaak Ti was leaps and bounds stronger and agile than both of them. She schooled both Aayla and Harry on their self-made obstacle course they had run the previous few days. Maris wasn't far behind the two of them, and it was no small matter for Harry to admit Maris was in far better shape than Harry had been at that age.

The second major event of the still cool early morning was when he witnessed his first lightsaber spar, which Harry had to say was one of the coolest things he had ever seen.

"Where are we going?" Harry asked.

"Because you're not a Jedi, I've neglected a normal part of my training while here," said Aayla from his side. Shaak Ti was behind him as well as Maris. "I need to correct that oversight."

Aayla currently played guide as she took the group to a wide-open clearing she recalled from a few days ago when she had gotten ahead of Harry on their initial run.

"And what would that be? All you said was a spar? Is this like hand to hand?"

"No, a lightsaber spar," said Shaak Ti.

"Oh," said Harry dumbly as he suddenly realized he should have known that. He tended to forget these Jedi used the glowing energy swords as their primary weapons instead of wands.

"Just watch with Maris, Harry. She's still a Padawan, so she'll learn just as much from observing a spar between two unfamiliar fighters as she will from direct participation," said Aayla.

They eventually reached the clearing, which was approximately thirty meters across in an almost near perfect circular shape and had flower trees grown close together in a tight perimeter.

Harry sat down at the forest edge next to Maris and the two watched as Shaak Ti and Aayla both walked to the center of the clearing.

"Think you can provide commentary for me here? I know next to nothing about sword fighting. I've used a sword only once in my life, and that was when I was twelve. I flung the thing around like it was a stick."

Maris smiled at the thought, and Harry realized it was probably the first genuine smile she had given him. "Sure, I'll be glad to."

Aayla and Shaak Ti had both stopped their slow walk to the center of the clearing. They faced each other, and gave a semi formal bow before they each removed the lightsaber tied to their belts. Both sabers quickly ignited with a snap hiss sound that always gave a thrill a excitement to Harry as he heard it. Shaak Ti's and Aayla's lightsabers were both a very pale blue color, and the sound of both swords filled the clearing with a dull near sub-sonic thrum.

"There are other kinds of colors for lightsabers," said Maris, as she somehow picked up on what Harry had focused upon. "Jedi usually prefer to use Green or Blue. There are a rare few Jedi who find crystals to make their lightsabers Yellow, Purple, or Orange, but most use Green or Blue. There are rumors of White sabers existing, but those are more the stuff of legends and myth for our Order. Sith tend to create their crystals artificially since they can't easily access the planet Jedi take pilgrimages to for their crystals, and the Sith's crystals are almost always Red."

His thoughts on the colors and what significance they may have were interrupted by the loud reverb-like sound of both lightsabers suddenly in motion. The blades impacted each other, and Harry had to hold back his cringe at the finger-nail on chalkboard like sound of the energies as they clashed and tried to dominate each other.

"They're both using their favored lightsaber forms," said Maris as she began a commentary for Harry. "Shaak Ti utilizes Makashi, which you may hear them call Form II. It's a minimalist's fighting style, that focuses its efforts upon efficiency in its attacks and parries. It's a style that's excellent against enemies who use lightsabers, and terrible against anyone else."

Harry listened to Maris' words, and began to do his best to analyze Shaak Ti's movements. They were sharp and direct, and almost reminded Harry of some of the very rigid and precise movements he had once seen on formal fencers on Earth use. While she had fast footwork, he could very well envision a user of this style as they found themselves in trouble against the clone troopers he had fought earlier.

He turned his attention to Aayla, and Maris went right into the description of what his Twi'lek friend favored.

"Aayla looks like she's using a combination of Ataru and Djem So, which are Form VI and V. Ataru is highly aggressive, and isn't meant to be used within a confined space or against multiple opponents. Djem So is the form she falls back into while she defends and quickly transitions back to offensive moves. What's interesting here, is that she has a second lightsaber that she uses as well, and she's recognized as the Order's best dual-blade combatant. That is a much less used form called Jar'kai."

Harry nodded, as he remembered Aayla discuss the dual-blade form earlier that week, and he definitely saw the pride in her eyes as she discussed her lightsaber training. He couldn't imagine tracking one of the deadly blades as it swung around his body. Two blades seemed suicidal to him.

The difference between the Jedi as they fought was night and day to Harry. Aayla's moves were large, and often quite showy with a bit of acrobatics thrown in, but the additional movements definitely had the potential to add more power to her strikes. Meanwhile, Shaak Ti often did not even parry Aayla's strikes, which caused Aayla to be thrown off balance on occasion and retreat when her strikes missed completely.

"If she continues as she is, Aayla will tire out much faster than Shaak Ti, won't she?" he asked aloud.

"Yes. Makashi is not a completely defensive form like Soresu, but it certainly can give the advantage to a user in a one on one fight like this against someone who's much more aggressive."

He continued to watch the fight, and cringed every time he saw the blades strike the other combatant. He was aware the power of the blades had been turned down to a less dangerous level since it was a spar, but he was well aware that each strike represented at least a first degree burn that would need to be treated later.

After around twenty minutes, the spar ended. Harry conjured water glasses for both women, and floated them over to the two as they approached.

"Very useful ability, Harry," said Shaak Ti as she enjoyed the cold drink.

"We could always give you the job of official Jedi Water Boy," Aayla piped in quickly, which earned a raised eyebrow from Shaak Ti and a chuckle from Maris.

"I'll have you know my water is simply divine, Secura. Keep it up and I'll simply take my wondrous water conjuring abilities elsewhere," he said jokingly, but even the joke felt lame as he honestly felt tired after just watching the two women spar.

Aayla stared at him for a bit afterwards, then slowly allowed herself to smile, "Ready for your spar now, Harry?"

Harry wearily got up, and he knew whatever was about to happen was going to be painful and there was no way to avoid it. He could actually feel Maris' silent laughter behind him, and Aayla certainly had a very smug look upon her face.

He followed her out to the center of the clearing, though he left a considerably larger distance between the two than Shaak Ti had allowed. Aayla already had drawn her lightsaber, and appeared to have her second one in reserve still, so Harry decided to respect that and drew only one of his wands.

As he looked in her eyes, he could quite plainly see how seriously she was taking the spar they were about to participate in. There was no joking now. Just pure raw focus from her.

Harry glanced at Shaak Ti, who had caught both of their eyes at this point. "Ready?" she asked. Harry and Aayla both nodded.

"Begin."

-o0o0o-

Aayla already had a basic plan in mind for how to approach this duel as it began. '_Close the distance. Don't travel in a straight line. Close the distance_,' she chanted in her head.

She was halfway to her target and had ignited her lightsaber when he suddenly wasn't there anymore. The Force told her to duck and roll, and she did so without hesitation. Two bolts of red energy flow over her head at twice the speed of a blaster shot, and she could actually feel the intent behind it. She intuitively knew that if that red bolt had hit her, she would have instantly been rendered unconscious.

Another bolt flew at her in quick succession, and she parried it with her lightsaber, sending it straight back at Harry. He side-stepped it easily She half wondered if he would only evade and cast in this duel, and felt she should at least probe his defenses directly a few times before she turtled down and simply reflected his spells back at him.

She made another quick movement towards him, but diverted halfway there. He apparated once again, and unfortunately for him, appeared only a dozen feet from her new direction. His eyes widened at the miscalculation on his part, and he responded to her arcing lightsaber blade with a blast of cold water right to her face. A second spell followed which froze the water and caused her arms and neck to lock up while her still moving legs slipped on the now frozen ground.

She applied the Force to her muscles, which allowed her to roll instinctively to the side as the ground became quicksand and vines appeared from nowhere to tie her down. The ice upon her arms, chest, and neck shattered with the application of strength, and she was able to get back to her feet as another round of bolts headed towards her, along with a few at the ground.

'_He realized I can block almost anything thrown at me, so he's targeting the land around me instead,_' she thought as she parried a few spells. With unknown effects upon the ground below her, she quickly decided it was safer to stand anywhere but where she currently did

'_I have to try something different_,' she thought. If she wanted to engage him with her lightsaber, she would need to pin him down or distract him long enough to close the distance. She reached out with the force and grabbed a large wood-like leaf of a tree flower that was behind Harry. It gave way easily to her powers, and was flung towards Harry's back.

It was loud enough that he heard the noise, and would likely apparate out. She sank deeper into the Force, and tried to determine where he would appear. She trusted her instincts, and grabbed a flower to her extreme right and ripped it from the tree.

Harry appeared right in front of it, but unfortunately faced her rather than the flower. He raised his wand to fire another spell at him as she moved towards him.

He never even registered the branch's movements until it smacked him hard at the back of his head.

-o0o0o-

"I hate precognitive abilities," said Harry emphatically after he had finally been roused.

"You'll get used to it, said Maris from his side as she kept one eye upon him as Aayla and Shaak Ti continued their spar, which stopped once they realized Harry was awake.

"Feeling alright?" asked Aayla, who Harry could tell genuinely wanted to know, but had just a touch of mirth in her eyes.

"I didn't last a minute against you," Harry said as tried to smile and winced at the sudden pain that throbbed in his head.

"True, you also didn't use any of the large explosive or extremely deadly attacks you have either," she said in response. "You have to remember, I've seen your pensieve memories and I know just how much you were holding back. That also gave me more time to think about how you might fight."

Harry felt a bit better after that explanation, though he still pouted childishly when Aayla refused him a rematch. With their workout routine concluded, and Harry had been given a liberal amount of time to apply ice to his head, the group returned to the tent. The women cleaned up in the bath while Harry slowly prepared their breakfast after he ingested a few pain relief potions. While they ate, they collectively discussed their plans for the coming days and their options beyond.

They currently had five ships that were hyperspace capable at their disposal. Two were one-seat Jedi star fighters, two were 'Larty' troop transports with heavy artillery along with fairly decent military-grade engines, and finally they had a slightly modified freighter with a very light weapons complement. The freighter would allow them to be more inconspicuous, but it would require a lot of rework as systems had to be completely torn out and redone to ensure there was nothing nefarious added by its previous owner.

Harry's secret project had garnered more and more attention from Aayla over the past few days, and this particular morning was no exception. He had everything plotted and diagramed, and all he needed was to test his theories. If it worked, they would have an incredibly powerful secret weapon at their disposal on the ship, as well as improvements to the overall ship's design and utility. He would just need to convince Maris and Shaak Ti of the need to keep it all a secret when it was finally revealed to them.

They ultimately decided today would be spent moving all ships to one general area, and then Shaak Ti and Aayla would plan out the remainder of the modifications needed. Harry demonstrated his ability to transfigure metal into any shape, which allowed far more flexibility and ideas for their designs. He also made a request to set aside one of the crew quarters aboard the ship specifically for his use.

After breakfast, Harry packed up the tent and powered down the ward stones. Shaak Ti was just as curious as Aayla and asked numerous questions. Maris watched all his actions like a hawk but seemed content to let others ask the questions. None of them had ever seen or heard of anything like it, and were openly curious if anyone in their Galaxy had ever utilized the Force in such a manner for protection.

With the cave now officially abandoned, they boarded the stolen freighter, which Shaak Ti insisted would have no name until they made all modifications to the ship. All three Jedi shook their heads at Harry, who bounced around in excitement since it was his first time aboard a craft that was capable of spaceflight, even if there was no immediate plan to leave the atmosphere this particular trip.

They set the ship down in the middle of the now abandoned Republic air field. The clones, upon their abandonment of the planet, had cleaned up very thoroughly, as there was barely any refuse or machinery left. Harry quickly apparated to each spot where the ships were hidden and released the wards and protections. After the droids were portkeyed back, Shaak Ti and Aayla each took one Larty and one starfighter back to their freighter, while Maris and Harry were delegated to move the mass driver power supply back to base.

The incredulous looks Harry received for the theft of the Mass Driver, its power supply, and over a thousand rounds of ammunition for it made Harry blush when he noticed it. Then he carefully explained it was going to be a surprise, and if everything worked out they would have it as an optional hidden weapon on any ship they wanted.

The tent was erected again underneath the freighter, and then Harry re-established a perimeter with the wards far enough out that all five ships were under the protections. All protections that he had previously made within the cave were done except for the Fidelius, since he really didn't see the need for it anymore. In addition, casting that particular charm always tired him out, and he needed his strength to make sure he contributed over the next few days.

After a tiring morning getting everything together, they got to work. Aayla and Shaak Ti were both designing and putting down the exact modifications they intended to make to the freighter on datapads. Harry had gone back to working on his project, while Maris had been tasked with tearing down much of the interior of the freighter, which had eventually been chosen as the basic frame to start their build from.

Maris quickly finished her tasks, and Harry had everything ready to begin his project except for the raw materials, which he would get as soon as he knew which pieces were safe to take from the Lartys. To pass the time, Harry began Maris' Occlumency lessons. Trying the same approach he did with Aayla, he sat with the young Zabrek woman as she tried finding her magical core. The young Padawan had a much more difficult time finding the right state of meditation, so Harry knew this would be a slower process than with Aayla. In fact, her frustrations were very similar to the ones Harry experienced a decade previous.

They decided to first pull all internal systems on the freighter and replace them with a mix of existing software from the Larty's, as well as custom work they knew the Astromech droids would be able to quickly produce for them. They planned to pull all weapons from the freighter and then swap them with Larty and Jedi star fighter weapons. Finally, they would swap the hyperspace engine arrays with the far superior engines found on the Jedi starfighter rings that were hopefully still in orbit around the planet. For Sublight engines, the Lartys would prove more than adequate for their needs, since their primary purpose was to quickly ferry large weight complements between the orbital capital ships and ground forces.

Eventually, Harry was finally forced to give in and present what he had worked on the past few days: a modified pocket dimensions similar to the ones found in his trunk. His main contribution to the ship was use space expansion charms on one of the crew quarters and turn it into a lounge. Then he would place the equivalent of six vertical one-compartment trunks that opened via doors in that compartment. For each room, the 'doors' would open into a pocket dimension that could be any size desired, and every one would contain a fully private bath and all other amenities.

The big project he had been working on was to support a pocket dimension that had two exits. He wanted a doorway that led into an oversized and reinforced space that would house the Mass-Driver. Another smaller circular hole would be created in the pocket dimension for the gun to fire through. The frame for this circular hole could be placed anywhere on the ship, and the whole thing would hopefully end up completely invisible to scanners that looked for standard weapon signatures.

It took fifteen seconds for the minds of the three Jedi to fully comprehend what Harry had planned and how much potential this idea had. Storage space issues on starships could be solved with this. Hot Bunks on smaller ships would become a thing of the past. Most importantly, their ships could be proverbial lion in sheep's clothing. Harry even wondered what would happen if a door was left on a planet while another was left on a ship or another planet.

But Harry could easily see how much they liked this idea and would want to spread news of it far and wide, so he felt the need to bring them all back to reality with his next statement.

"Harry, is it possible to mass produce these sort of stones? If the ability to make ships like this spread, it could revolutionize interstellar travel," asked Shaak Ti.

"The runes are easy to create once you have the instructions. The only hard part is empowering with magic and keeping the energy sustained long-term."

"But I don't believe you'll want to let word of this spread," Harry said with a deep sigh. He looked at them intently and begged them to understand through his eyes. All he could imagine was the slaves that had previously been aboard this ship, chained to the wall in those cells he had torn apart. His companions however did not understand this if Harry could judge from the incredulous looks upon their faces.

"Can you imagine this in the hands of everyone? You have slavery in your galaxy still. Aayla says you have whole planets of nothing but criminals, ruled by even more powerful criminals. What would they give or do to get this? What would they do with it once they got it? You have enough problems with crime already in the galaxy. What criminals do if they do if they could hide whole shipments from your ship scanners"

Looking up he saw they understood where he was going with his statements, but didn't seem to like it. Harry sighed and looked back at the ship they were about to upgrade. "I'll bring knowledge of magic to your galaxy. I'll teach anyone you want. But I'll be damned if give anyone else more powerful ways to hurt and enslave people."

-o0o0o-

Aayla watched Harry walk off towards the forest edge after he gave his opinion on sharing a breakthrough that would have likely changed the face of the galaxy. She could see the possibilities of what he had been working so diligently on for days, and she knew Maris and Shaak Ti could as well. But Harry was right when he stated the potential of the seedier elements of the galaxy using it for harm.

"I keep forgetting he's not a Jedi," said Shaak Ti. "He certainly allows his emotions influence over his decisions."

"His emotions are expressed in his views, but I think he clearly recognizes the potential for abuse. You cannot deny what he said is right from a certain point of view. I'll go talk with him," said Aayla as she moved off without waiting for an acknowledgement from Shaak Ti or Maris.

She found Harry about fifty meters into the underbrush, head in his hands as he sat on a fallen log. She moved next to him and reached an arm tentatively around his shoulder. Instantly she was flooded without bursts of regret and sadness from him. He leaned into her without pause and blurted out without preamble, "I'm sorry."

"For what, telling us the truth?" said Aayla. "You may need to work on your delivery method, as the way you stomped off was a bit over the top, but you didn't say anything that wasn't completely true. I think Jedi tend to focus much of the time on the positive side of things, purposefully ignoring any negatives that exist. You're right. The Galaxy in general cannot be allowed access to this. They simply are not ready for it."

Aayla paused, "But I hope you'll teach me?"

"Of course, I never once had the intention of not teaching you," Harry said as he turned his head a bit to look up at Aayla.

She watched Harry take a deep breath, "I need to apologize to Shaak Ti and Maris for walking off."

He paused for a few moments, and she could sense the anxiety that radiated from him. "I'm just frustrated by what I keep hearing about this galaxy. I kept thinking of what an ideal future out amongst the stars would be like… or thinking that any advanced civilization spanning multiple worlds would always be some kind of utopia. Everyone would go out into space and everyone would push past a lot of their petty differences. But here I am, seeing slave ships, Dark Lords, and hearing about corrupt corporations and governments. I was so naïve to think that society's problems would just go away."

Aayla gave a rueful smile as she saw some of Harry's childlike preconceptions of the galaxy torn asunder. She said softly, "You should never stop believing one person can change things. Just imagine what this Galaxy would be like if you hadn't arrived. How many people would have died or been enslaved because of the Chancellor's actions. There are so many who owe you so much, Harry. I owe you something I can never repay."

That got another smile from Harry, one she admitted made her happier than anything had in a long time. He turned to her fully and said, "I have your friendship, that's more than enough payment. I may have lost my best friends when I got sent here, but I think I've definitely gained a new one."

She had to blink back the sudden wetness she felt gather in her eyes. Then she heard Harry chuckle softly and felt a burst of the Force. A small piece of cloth was conjured and handed to her, "For that bug that obviously just flew in your eye," he said with a mischievous smile.

"There are a lot of bugs out here," Aayla said as she laughed and wiped her eyes and nose. "Come on Mr. Wizard. We have engines to pull out of the freighter and they could use the help."

After she stood up and slid her Lekku behind her, she grabbed Harry's arm and pulled him up to his feet as well. The walk back was quick, with Harry gave warnings whenever he saw bugs flying by, in case it was the Twi'lek eating one that gotten her earlier.

The apologies Harry gave were quickly accepted, and Shaak Ti offered the only comment that he shouldn't let his emotions rule him so much amongst friends. The group of four then proceeded to combine efforts to tear down the remainder of the freighter. Engines, sensors, shielding, and hull plates were stripped down to their supporting frames. All of those pieces would be replaced with similar pieces from the Lartys, since the alloy that comprised their hulls was far superior to the freighters.

"This smuggler obviously was a proponent of 'Security through Obscurity'," said Shaak Ti, as they took a break from their efforts. "No major weapons, nor strong external shields or hull. He was obviously hoping to remain inconspicuous enough that no one would ever notice his slave trafficking. His problem was, all it would take is to be noticed once, and he would've been dead."

"And what prevents us from being identified with all this hardware that would get us in trouble," asked Harry.

"We'll change much of the equipment just enough so that it falls between the cracks of what the sensors look for. It also helps we have some of the more advanced identification sensors you can get on those Lartys. If we can fool them, we'll be able to fool anyone," Aayla told him.

Aayla was half-split on how to proceed in regards to Harry's tasks on the ship build. They needed his additions to the crew quarters, storage, and weapons, but she also wanted him to learn more about what went into quickly assembling a starship piecemeal like this. Her other problem was that really she wanted to know how he was creating the pocket dimensions.

"It doesn't need to be perfect," she eventually said when they discussed how much time he thought he would devote to the room and canon projects. "We're lucky to have the droids with us you stole. We can finish the basic structure and systems of the ship, and they can continue to make adjustments and modifications even while we're in flight to our destination."

With the sun nearly below the horizon down and no desire to continue to work through the night with only the various ships external lighting, the tired group wandered into the tent. Harry voluntarily began dinner while the Jedi took a group bath together. Shaak Ti found amusement in the low-tech accommodations, until she realized that the water was conjured via the force and banished the same way.

With all three in a state of relaxation in the bath's warm water, Maris verbalized all of their opinions when she said, "I definitely want one of these in my room on the ship."

"I think Harry will gladly provide you that, though I think he has some other projects he's still not telling us about," Aayla told them with a half-smirk.

"Oh, what else could he have to surprise us with?" Shaak Ti asked, extremely intrigued.

"I'm not totally sure to be honest. I've seen him playing around with some spare pieces of the freighter's hull that he didn't set aside to make the pocket-space door frames. He looked like he was trying to melt them into squares that resembled those stones that made the wards. I wonder if he's planning on putting wards on the ship."

"That has possibilities." Shaak Ti mused aloud. "I wonder what he would be capable of putting on the ship."

"Think he could do that hidden thing he did with the cave?" asked Maris.

"The Fidelius is what he called it. And I have no idea if he can place it on the ship. More than likely he's testing to see what's possible. You saw all the notes and diagrams he was using for the doors. I think he's making up a lot of this stuff as he goes along."

"His intelligence and ingenuity certainly cannot be denied," observed Shaak Ti.

Aayla sighed, "In the end, I think he just wants to be useful. He doesn't want to _not_ be doing something."

"He fears not having a place among us," said Shaak Ti as she closed her eyes and sunk a bit lower into the water, allowing her shoulder to sink in and the water to rise to her chin. "He has lost everything, except for the contents of those trunks and his knowledge. Even his name has no meaning here."

"Well, he's got me," said Aayla. "I've learned more '_new_' things from him in the past four days then I think I have in the past decade from normal Jedi methods. I'd like to stay around him for as long as possible."

Shaak Ti raised her head slightly, trying to gauge the depth of any potential hidden meanings in Aayla's statement. "Who knows where the Force will lead us. But I'll admit the signs and portents that swirl around him are interesting to behold and ponder," said Shaak Ti. "Almost every conversation we have with him along with his mere presence alters every possible future I foresee."

"Less talking, more relaxing," uttered Maris as she slipped nearly under the water in her exhaustion.

Aayla watched as Shaak Ti followed Maris' lead when she closed her eyes. The Twi'lek herself was never as good with her visions of the future as others were, but she hoped more and more Harry's road in the future stayed with hers.

-o0o0o-

After dinner, the group retired to the couches in the tent. Shaak Ti and Aayla revised plans for the ship upgrades based on the more detailed information they had received today, Harry continued his work on the door frames, while Maris meditated and attempted to find her core.

"Harry, what were you doing when you were messing around with those other pieces of ship's hull earlier?" asked Aayla.

Harry set his wand down and stretched his back. Continuous rune engravement tended to leave him sore and tense, especially when it was the same tedious sequence over and over again. The work was not difficult, but there was a lot to get through.

As he looked up to answer, he saw all three Jedi's attention on him as they eagerly awaited his. "Well, I wanted to try and see if I could place wards on the ship. When I found that the runes could successfully be engraved and empowered on the metal I've made the doors with, I wondered what other sort of enchantments I could apply."

"A Fidelius can't be placed on moving objects, so that's right out. I wanted to experiment with some other things, like fire suppression and unplottability wards. I also wanted to try and see if the astromechs could sense any of the energy in the wards themselves, maybe give some readings on their strength, if they're in danger of failing. I have no idea what sort of tolerances their sensors work within, or if Magic can even be quantified, so I figured this might be a good test."

He looked back at the drawings and designs of a specific component for a moment, and continued.

"And ultimately, I wanted to try and make an input for the wards directly in the cockpit. I doubt it could ever been as simple as flipping a switch to bring wards up or down, but some of the simple stuff could be powered up or down right there in the cockpit with some direct focused Magic. Basically I have no idea if any of it'll work. So, I'm going to work on the doors and compartments in the day, and this _fun_ little distraction at night."

"What's unplottability?" asked Shaak Ti.

"It means the location cannot be drawn on a newly created map, with the added bonus that it doesn't matter if it's electronic or paper. Any map that existed before the ward was put up will still show an object, but no one will be able to pinpoint a location beyond the point in time the ward was set up. I'm hoping, it'll help cloak us from scanners. Maybe even from eyesight, but we'll see. I can't guarantee anything, it's just an experiment."

Aayla had a grin upon her face a mile-wide with the explanation, and Shaak Ti and Maris were simply left speechless for a minute or so before they slowly forced themselves back to work.

-o0o0o-

Day Two began when Aayla, Shaak Ti, and Maris removed large sections of the two Larty's hulls and added them to the skeletal freighter. The process was very quick with Harry's ability to undo the welds and bonds used to anchor the plates to the ship. Right before each piece was set and anchored to the freighter, Harry applied _Impervious_ and _Duro_ runes and charms with the hope they would add more protection to the ship. Unfortunately, there still remained massive sections where no hull piece would correctly fit, and Harry would later be asked to transfigure the plates to the fit dimensions required.

Aayla took time out just after lunch to fly her ship up into orbit twice to grab the rings for her starfighter and Barriss'. The Jedi starfighters were not capable of hyperspace travel on their own. Instead, the ship would dock into a ring that carried the necessary engines, which usually were parked in orbit around a planet when not in use. The rings also possessed navigation computers and additional fuel that would be useful. The navi-computers used by the Jedi were vastly superior to the Republic issued hardware aboard the Lartys, and with two available, the ship would have a solid backup in case the primary was damaged. They salvaged the targeting systems from the Jedi starfighters for the same reasons.

Harry finished the transfigurations necessary for the freighter's hull by mid afternoon under Shaak Ti's strict guidance. The only difference between these plates and plates originally laid down were the runes of permanence inscribed upon each that ensured the transfigured shapes would hold. If the runes hadn't been inscribed, there was always the chance the magical energy Harry imbued the transfiguration with could fade or an errantly cast _Finite_ would revert the object back to its original state. This wasn't likely to happen in the next hundred years given Harry's power, but it was a chance he wasn't willing to take with the three Jedi's lives on the line along with his.

Their main obstacle of Day Two wasn't ship related however, it was the heat. Harry could feel the sweat pour off him while he worked, and the three Jedi made liberal use of his water conjuration and cooling charms. Harry had already become somewhat used to Aayla's normal state of near-undress after he had been subjected to her skin-tight leather outfits that hugged her hips and chest. All the heat seemed to was increase the ability of her sweat to attract his attention to the slight dip of her outfit's bust and waist lines.

Maris however, now worked diligently in a very small pair of shorts and a 'bra' which consisted of a single black horizontal strap that attempted and failed to modestly wrap around her ample cleavage. Her pale skin reflected brightly in the sunlight, and she seemed to possesses a permanent desire to be soaked with Aquamenti charms once she had discovered Harry's ability to produce them at will.

Shaak Ti had been the one to make his mouth drop, which is quite the statement when one considered Aayla's large bust line and Maris' near lack of a top. The Jedi Master had toughed it out for most of the day, but finally relented in the late afternoon. She removed her Jedi robe to expose her wrappings underneath, which is all they literally were. The entire outfit consisted of two flat white straps that went vertically down her chest and joined in her crotch, which then joined together into a thong that then went in a straight line up her back. Aayla caught him gawk at the choice of clothes and nearly fell over from laughter.

"What so funny?" asked Shaak Ti after she had thrown her Jedi robe aside onto a makeshift table they had created.

"Oh nothing, I just don't think Harry expected your outfit to cover so much Master Ti," said Aayla between giggles.

"Do Jedi normally wear clothes like this?" asked Harry as he gestured vaguely around at the three nearly naked females that surrounded him.

"Well, Aayla wouldn't be that out of place wearing her current outfit almost anywhere, except maybe the Council Chambers. I normally wouldn't be seen wearing just this, if that's what you're asking, and neither would Padawan Brood. But, I think we can trust you with our virtue, Harry," said a very smug Shaak Ti towards the end.

Harry simply gaped at Shaak Ti, unable to process how to joke with such a normally serious woman. She saw this and sighed.

As she leaned back against an engine block she had just cleaned, she said, "The Taboo on relationships is one that affects all Jedi, Harry. We rarely let our guard down to anyone but our own Masters. It's a solitary life… a very lonely life. We arrived here, and I immediately recognized Aayla felt safe around you. She holds nothing back because she fears nothing from you. As for Maris and I, we've reached that same thinking very quickly as well."

"I'm safe?" croaked out Harry, unable to determine if he should be flattered, embarrassed, or depressed by the blunt statement. He half wondered if this was the galactic method of informing someone they'd entered the 'friend-zone'.

"Yes, you are. You understand the vows the three of us have made, and we are also well aware that you've made _no_ such thing as well," said Aayla as she and Maris approached.

Aayla sat down on the engine nearest Harry and drank from her canteen. She poured the rest of the contents over her head and tossed it to Harry with the unspoken request to refill it. Maris waited her turn and simply asked to be drenched with in an _Aquamenti_ blast.

"But who knows what lays in store for the Jedi. If it wasn't for you and Aayla's actions, I'm willing to bet the Jedi Order would be all but extinct right now. We have suddenly found ourselves in a radically different Galaxy. There have been many who have pushed for updates to the Jedi Code for years. In fact, I had no idea just how much push there was for change until I became a member of the Council

"The Order's inherent resistance to change and the political influences from the Galactic Senate are what have prevented changes to the Order. The Chancellor being revealed as a Sith Lord may be the final straw needed to make real changes," finished Shaak Ti, who no longer seemed to talk to Harry but instead talked more to herself by the end.

She gave a brief smile and stood up, and before she walked away to continue on to the next engine block that needed to be cleaned, she said, "Who knows where the Force will lead us, and what new limitations may or may not be imposed once all Jedi are reunited."

Harry glanced up at Aayla at the implication Shaak Ti gave, and was rewarded when he saw her glance at him as well at the very same words. The look only lasted a moment, but it was enough that Harry definitely saw a possible reason behind it. He looked away, stunned, and unable to concentrate further.

'_Does Aayla actually like me?_'

-o0o0o-

By that night, the six pocket dimensions for the crew's quarters were all completed. Currently the environments in each space were merely large twenty by twenty meter cubes with no adornments or color other than slate grey walls that were illuminated by lighting runes placed every two meters along the edge of the floor. He brought in some debris from outside and quickly transfigured bare essentials living necessities so Shaak Ti and Maris would have two separate rooms along with a bath and fresher.

He moved the tent from outside into a third room, which left the remaining three empty for now. Aayla and Shaak Ti would later be tasked with the template for a default room's design. Harry would then transfigure the walls in all six rooms to match the others. They discussed not using all the space in each room, which would leave space outside each normal apartment area that could be used for smuggling. Harry felt the biggest time consumption would be to make six showers and hot tubs that produced and vanished water on command.

Beyond the six living quarters, he had three remaining doors, which were slightly special. The frames themselves were expandable, so that if he actually wanted, he could have accommodated an entire unmodified Larty to pass inside. The largest room's origin came from the idea they should not leave the Jedi Starfighters and large pieces of dismantled Lartys behind on the planet. The ships were placed in one room and all the stolen weapons, munitions and food in another.

The final room was his experimental room, which he believed he had the underlined theory correct. The Mass Driver, its power supply, and all ammunition had been carefully floated into it, and then the doorway restored to its normal size. He had created a small circular portal, and managed to link it to the same pocket dimension into which the Mass Driver had been loaded. The part of the process that proved even more difficult had been to get the second portal to appear at a specific place on the wall inside the pocket dimension.

Tomorrow he would expand the hole of the circular 'door' and then levitate and maneuver the tip of the Mass Driver's gun through. It would be almost perfectly camouflaged and only inches of the barrel would be outside of the pocket dimension, which would not appear outside the circular portal's 'door'. If the gun wasn't in use, the door would shut, effectively removing it from the normal world. The sound, waste, vibration, and recoil produced by the Mass Driver could all be negated via Magic inside of the main pocket dimension, and Harry sincerely hoped this secret weapon could help the group out someday.

The part that actually scared all the girls was how he applied magic to the gun. Each shell fired by the gun had been lightened in weight and strengthened using magic. As the shell left the gun barrel, runes would strip away the spells that originally lightened it. This would have no effect upon the shell's outbound velocity, meaning the shells now could travel much faster and lost no impact damage potential due to loss of kinetic energy.

The final touch was something Harry long-debated internally, and finally went ahead with. He placed Muggle-Repelling and Notice-Me-Nots upon all nine of the special doors within the ship. These charms prevented access to the pocket dimension by anyone who was not a Jedi or Wizard. He did not really expect trouble to come from them, but Harry had long ago devoted himself to a 'better safe than sorry' mentality. If there was a possible risk he could identify, he would move heaven and earth to ensure it was always mitigated, no matter how remote the possibility of its realization.

The final two days of "build" on the ship saw the normal weapons, propulsion, and life-support systems successfully brought online by mid-morning of the fourth day of construction. The fact that so much equipment had been levitated and installed amazed Harry once he was able to look back and take stock of just how much they had accomplished. The fact that the astromech droids and their protocol droid could work through the night also was a godsend for them.

The Jedi spent the day on status checks on everything, which ensured everything worked properly. The astromech droids were then set loose upon the ship's interfaces to redesign and optimize the software present to work more efficiently with the ship's new systems.

Harry had spent a large amount of time over the last two days with his experimental ward stones and a rudimentary controller and anchor stone which were placed in an inconspicuous back corner of the cockpit. Magic could be fed into and out of the stone to bring a majority of the wards up or down. He had ultimately developed three different sets of ward stones which could be activated and deactivated through the same anchor.

One set for standard operation which would always be active. It contained among many things fire suppression runes carved at specific key places across the ship as well as imperturbability runes to add structural support to the ship's frame and backbone. The second set would be used for stealth in space. The unplottability ward, when active, completely dropped the freighter from the sensors from the Larty. They hoped its stealth would extend to the sensors used by Capital Ships such as Star Destroyers and Dreadnaughts.

Finally, the last set of ward stones was for if they needed to hide the ship on the ground. A loose semi solid dome would form over the surface of the ship where illusions and charms could easily be attached. The result would completely hide the ship from view. The Jedi were incredibly impressed with each set, and Shaak Ti muttered as she walked away that she wanted to be permanently stationed aboard the ship in the future.

Aayla was much more direct with her praise. "You realize you're going to make every person who comes aboard this ship incredibly jealous?"

"Well, we just won't let anyone else aboard other than you three. We can tour the galaxy on our own, fighting for truth and justice." Harry tried to strike a manly pose, but the effect was ruined by how stupid it looked and by the massive yawn Harry gave halfway through it.

"Ok Mr. Wizard. I think it's time we went to bed The droids will make the final list of fixes overnight. We'll definitely leave for Alderaan tomorrow," said Aayla before she wished Maris and Shaak Ti goodnight.

Harry started to look forward to sleep over the past few days more than he had at any point in his life. He had still not allowed himself to ponder a relationship with Aayla in his wildest dreams. There had been no other hints at her feelings since the fleeting look she gave him when Shaak Ti had pondered possible changes for Jedi's Order's future. The Taboo was a constant presence at the forefront of both their minds, and neither pushed for anything.

The current standard operating procedure between the two bunkmates was 'look but don't touch… much'. They both now slept totally in the nude each night without any incidents. There had yet to be even one inappropriate touch from either of them, and Harry was in no hurry to push any limits with a woman devoted to a life of celibacy, though in the back of his mind he found the entire situation absolutely ridiculous.

He didn't really understand his own feelings for Aayla. Sure she was attractive, amazingly so in fact. She was incredibly intelligent, athletic, and she was very powerful in terms of Magic/Force potential or whatever the pair were calling things at any given time of the day. But he was also worried he had started to develop feelings for her simply because of the situation they had found themselves in. He had no clue what the future was going to bring, especially now that they were about to leave the planet, but he hoped it held as much promise as it had upon Felucia.

-o0o0o-

Consciousness slowly returned to Aayla on what was going to be the group's last day on Felucia. It was now eight days since her life changed. Eight days since her soldiers had tried to murder her, and eight days since she had met Harry for the first time.

_Harry_.

That name conjured so many meanings and emotions within Aayla she had begun to think something had snapped within her to be capable of so many varied reactions. She stared at him as he slept next to her. He was completely exhausted when he flopped into their shared bed the previous night. He had worked himself extremely hard to finish all the additions he wanted done before their take-off today.

She smiled at the thought of what he had created for their ship. The idea of some of those protections on that flying hunk of junk was absolutely revolutionary, and that was before the subject of what the crew and storage rooms were like. The jokes about serving aboard no other ship after this may have seemed like jokes to Harry, but Aayla could definitely see the sincerity behind both Shaak Ti's and Maris' statements. The ship they had managed to scrounge together amazed even her, who had spent months at a time in various undercover roles as a ship mechanic.

Now, give her a few hours at a black market chop shop for ship upgrades, then allow for roughly two weeks at a service station with the ship in more optimal conditions than a swamp planet, and it would literally the best ship she had ever flown upon.

Today all they had to do was pack up all the loose machinery and spare parts they wanted to keep with them into one of his storage spaces, bring the frames on board, and leave the planet. She was extremely proud of the design work that Shaak Ti and her had done on the freighter. To the unassuming eye, it appeared to be a near-standard YT-1300 freighter. In truth, it was probably the first step towards a new type of Jedi specific craft. The possibilities that Harry could offer them were endless, and she hoped she would be there to see him through it all and offer her support as they continued to make improvements upon it.

How long that support could be offered, wasn't up to her however, and she knew it. She was a Jedi Knight with enough experience to likely be promoted to Master soon. The problem with her rank was that the Council still decided where she went and who went with her. There was the distinct possibility, when the remnants of the Jedi united, someone could order her to leave Harry and the rest of the group to go on a mission that would prevent her from seeing him again possibly for years depending upon the assignment.

She had an ally, though, in Shaak Ti. As a member of the Council, Shaak Ti was now drowning in political capital thanks to Aayla's warning since most Jedi were only aware of Shaak Ti's role in the events around Order 66. But, most importantly, Shaak Ti was her friend.

Hopefully that would be enough.

She wanted to get up to get some food, but realized she could not actually leave the room yet. She laughed softly in humor and annoyance at the same time. Harry started to lock their room magically after he realized Maris was a bit of a prankster. After he taught Maris the basic spell finisher _Finite Incantatum_, Harry had begun to ward their door with stronger protections. He had not said why he had begun to lock the door yet, but she figured it was probably Harry's attempt to protect Aayla from questions that concerned their sleeping arrangements.

She closed her eyes again in resignation and settled in next to Harry to wait for him to wake up on his own. Maybe she could decrease the time it took to find her core in the meantime.

-o0o0o-

By mid-day, everything was wrapped up. They had managed to load the remains of both Jedi starfighters, as well as the bulk of the torn-down Lartys into the massive storage pocket dimension. Harry had taken quite a bit of the random scraps from the original hull plating and loaded them into equal sized piles in each of the six crew quarters. Harry's logic was that he would transfigure similar things in similar ways in each room as they were built up. Walls, chairs, tables, etc would all originally come from approximately the same source material.

Eventually, the last minute checks of the ship were done, which left the four companions in the cockpit as they gazed out the canopy in silence. Aayla felt a bit of accomplishment at everything they had done. She had built and performed large amounts of maintenance on ships in the past, but never before had she undertaken anything with the sheer scope of what they had just done. By no means was the ship complete, but with Shaak Ti's help, Maris' steady diligent work, and Harry's insane ideas, the final result was above and beyond anything she had originally envisioned a week previous while she doodled ideas on a datapad in Harry's tent.

"We're not done yet," Harry said finally.

"What's left? What did we forget?" said Aayla anxiously. She was worried that it must be monumental if Harry of all people remembered something the rest of them had forgotten. Every system that was required for a safe interstellar flight and escape if they encountered enemies was in place to her knowledge.

She turned around to look at Harry who was sitting in one of the two rear chairs of the cockpit. He was smirking at the worry in her voice, which led Aayla to believe that this couldn't possibly turn out well.

Harry leaned in and brought a hand up to his mouth as if to whisper conspiratorially. "We've forgotten to name our ship," he said in a mock-whisper that all three Jedi could plainly hear.

The suspense had been built up masterfully. Shaak Ti actually snorted and covered her face. Maris rolled eyes. Aayla wanted to smack the human who managed to turn almost everything he did into something that amused him.

"A name?" was all Aayla could finally bring herself to say instead of hitting Harry over the top of his head like she felt Harry deserved.

"Yup, shall we hold a meeting? I like meetings. Can it be a committee?" asked Harry excitedly. Aayla watched him wave a hand at a bag of spare junk he had decided to carry around with him for random transfiguration purposes. She watched as he changed a small piece of metal that had flown into his hand into a small wooden gavel. "Can I call the meeting to order?"

Aayla watched his smile grow larger and larger while he did all this. She quickly reached out and grabbed the gavel from his hands, causing him to mock-pout. "Ok Harry, you can stop acting like a five year old now," she said, which only caused the pout to become even more over the top.

"Let's just name the ship. You know he won't stop until he gets his way on this. Any ideas?" said Maris while she covered her own grin.

"I'll leave this in you three's very capable hands," said Shaak Ti, who had already turned around and begun the pre-flight checks.

"Well, Harry? You were the one so adamant to name this thing." said Aayla impatiently.

She watched in exasperation as Harry had to lean back and actually think of a name. After a few moments, she saw the corner of his mouth twitch in amusement, and he began to speak, "My father had three best friends growing up. They pushed each other, learned advanced magic together, and watched out for each other. They were three wizards, and one who… was something else."

"They were pranksters, and yet the excelled at almost everything they put their collective mind's toward. In the end, their biggest achievement was when they broke laws and risked their very lives to learn a very specific kind of highly restricted magic so they could spend time with their fourth friend when he would be forced to endure unimaginable agony once a month."

"I think we're quite similar. We have three Jedi, and one oddball in the mix. And I think we'll all end up good friends before all this is said and done with. They had a name for their little group. They called themselves the Marauders. How about 'The Marauder' for the name of our ship?"

Aayla had felt her eyebrows steadily rise as he told the tale of his father. The connections were rather uncanny. When he suggested the name, she honestly couldn't of a single argument against it. She glanced at Maris, who while she still had a smile on her face from his previous antics, nodded her agreement. When she turned to Shaak Ti, she noticed that the Togrutan had stopped her pre-flight checks during the story, and had looked at Harry with a wistful smile on her face. When Aayla caught her eye, she nodded her agreement as well.

Aayla looked back to Harry, who had lost a bit of his confidence after he told the story and had shrunken a bit into himself. He actually looked afraid of the possible rejection of the name.

She reached over, picked up the gavel and said, "We officially dub this craft, 'The Marauder'."

"Meeting adjourned," and she brought down the gavel with a crack on the solid arm of her chair.

-o0o0o-

The initial preflight check of the ship was done an hour later, with minimal problems that needed correction. Mainly some spot checks on the sub-light engines just to ensure they were calibrated in as optimally as possible. Harry found himself strapped into the back right seat in the cockpit, behind Aayla who was in the co-pilot's seat. He felt the excitement build within him. He had flown with jets before. He had even flown in this very ship five days previous, but it had never left the atmosphere.

The repulsar lifts fired up, and The Marauder began its maiden flight as it slowly rose from the ground like a Harrier jet from back on Earth. Shaak Ti piloted the craft quite casually and began their ascent upwards into the upper atmosphere at a very leisurely pace in order to check and ensure the ship's atmospheric maneuvering capability.

They were about to start their true upoward ascent when Harry whistled, "Well, would you look at that?"

All three Jedi looked out the canopy and down at the ground in the direction Harry was looking, only to be startled themselves by what they saw. Droids for as far as the eye could see. All lined up in neat ordered rows.

And not a single one moved or acknowledged their existence.

"I've never seen a droid army behave like this. By all rights we should be getting shot out of the sky right now," said Aayla, confusion quite clear in her voice. "At the very least they should be launching flak at us."

"Why would they just stand around like that? Are they waiting for orders?" asked Maris.

"That is the only expla-" said Shaak Ti, before she stopped and looked quizzically at Maris. "Maris, check the Holonews. See if there have been any announcements."

"What sort of galaxy wide announcement do you think could've affected all the… droids… like this…" As Aayla asked her question, she slowed down as the reason behind the droids behavior became clear to her mind as she herself turned to Maris for a confirmation.

"With the Jedi scattered, and the Chancellor in control, there's no reason for the fake war, is there?" asked Aayla as she waited. "But protocols must be kept, right?"

Shaak Ti nodded as she turned back to her controls. "If it hasn't happened yet, I expect to very shortly see an announcement that the Clone War has officially ended."


End file.
